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Travel is always a hot button issue.  Long have been the debates between convenience and seeing, or making people see, the world.  What is a waste of time and what builds character and all that. And opinion has changed on it over time. For example, in WoW, you used to have to go and find […]

Syp is pondering what path to pick in Wildstar. Me, I'm most definitively going for settler, which is the path for people who want to build stuff for the benefit of the community. The simple fact...

As I mentioned in previous posts this week, under loud protest, I do not consider MMORPGs to be challenging, skill-based games. Not that they don't have challenging parts requiring lots of skill, but...

There are various dates one can identify with the death of 38 Studios. You could cite the day the company failed to pay its employees. You could choose the date the company declared bankruptcy. For me, 38 Studios was about the team and the friendships we shared, so I mark May 24 as the point [...]

Every so often I get the urge to run off and start another blog, as though this one wasn’t enough. Sometimes I think I have a funny idea.  Sometimes I repeat something I have already done. And for some reason, I always feel the need to make up yet another pseudonym.  I don’t know why. […]

Also today, I went to GameStop. Me: "How do you guys feel about the Xbox One?" Store clerk: "We don't sell those anymore."— Scott Nichols (@Duckols) May 23, 2013 When it comes to the recently announced Xbox One, I am not the target audience, having no desire to get another gaming console.  That is all […]

The new President of the People's Republic of China, Xi Jinping, this year started talking about "the China Dream", to offer an alternative to "the American Dream". Wikipedia defines the American...

A rather frightening thought passed though my mind this evening: was I past Gaming Middle Age? A quick working definition– Gaming Middle Age is the age at which, assuming average life expectancy, one has spent as many years gaming as one has left in which to game. Parse that to your hearts content. I’m primarily […]

Some decisions are best slept on.  For example, the decision to borrow some money in order to give Cryptic Studios $60 for a Neverwinter founder's pack under the understanding that it's a...

An Epic Drop™ of information has just been launched in to space by Carbine Studios. They cover Paths for WildStar with a humorous “in-game” video, a DevSpeak, and a comprehensive web page on the subject. Paths, simply put, are a sub-class to the character. The class, such as Warrior or Spellslinger, defines internal playstyle. A [...]

[WS] A Risky Path is a post from: Kill Ten Rats

At launch the problem was  Error 37 and other related “always online” issues. Then it was how the gold auction house was killing the game, something I first brought up in May of last year but which Blizzard, in the form of  Jay Wilson, was still professing amazement about 10 months later.  And then there […]

There are a handful of console games I really loved. But the majority of the games I played were always on the PC, and thus I was always annoyed by the ongoing "PC gaming is dying" discussion and the...

There has been some heated discussion on win conditions and Pay2Win business models here and elsewhere. The core issue is that if you play a game competitively and believe yourself to be winning over...

Whoops, the new launcher than came out today had… issues. Which I think makes it an official EVE Online feature! It even got Winterblink to make a Warp Drive Active comic about it. CCP took their old launcher, which just used to show some news and ads along with checking to see if you game […]

Edward CastronovaDiablo III's real-money auction house had some potential to be a major innovation in virtual economies. Instead, it looks like the designers failed to grasp lessons of virtual money management that are now more than a decade old. Namely, make sure you have enough sinks. There's a wonderful, well-informed, economically expert write-up over at Mises.Org, by Peter C. Earle. Mr. Earle knows his econ and he knows the game as well. It's some of the best virtual economy analysis I ahve seen in a long while. Thanks to Waiyen Tang for the heads-up!

While Middle-earth has been calling again of late… my relationship with that game has become as complicated as my relationship with EverQuest at this point… I have still found a bit of time to expand my reach in Storm Legion. Previously I had made my way through Cape Jule and Pelladane, finishing up what are […]

The guy playing Fiddlesticks was frequently taunting the enemy and shouting at them to fear him. On the one hand, that is kind of being the jerk. On the other hand, his character is an evil scarecrow with a fear attack. : Zubon Previously Crazy, RPer, or Troll? is a post from: Kill Ten Rats

Crazy, RPer, or Troll? is a post from: Kill Ten Rats

Our heroes had ended the previous session by killing the vampires in the dining hall of Castle Ravenloft. As they had used up a lot of resources like healing surges and daily powers in the last two...

Well, my Marvel Heroes infatuation was short lived.  I had a ball playing Iron Man back in the last open beta weekend, but since the last wipe I had been playing Hawkeye.  Hawkeye is a lot...

Well, my Marvel Heroes infatuation was short lived.  I had a ball playing Iron Man back in the last open beta weekend, but since the last wipe I had been playing Hawkeye.  Hawkeye is a lot...

Guild Wars is going on automated life support. Any thoughts on advancing the story on the Nameless Lich, Evennia’s disappearance, or Beyond Elona are now officially quashed. It would be nice if any of these are answered, but given ArenaNet’s penchant for keeping things unanswered most of it will likely go in their internal wiki [...]

[GW] Goodnight, Sweet Prince is a post from: Kill Ten Rats

Games are supposed to be fun, duh. It seems to be a regular comment that if something isn't fun, it should be removed from a game. Why are game developers so stupid to leave in systems that nobody finds fun? Or, just look at those EEEEEVIL free-to-play games with their "pay to win" strategies, forcing people to pay money to avoid the parts that aren't fun, amirite? Except, there's a good reason why games have parts that don't seem fun on the surface, but that build a long-term feeling of satisfaction. Let's take a look at satisfaction and why it matters in games.

Post copyright Brian 'Psychochild' Green. Visit the post to participate in the comments: Fun vs. satisfaction

I stood again in Middle-earth. In was in Archet, one of the small towns around Bree, and the forces of Sauron prepared to strike. I was in Lord of the Rings Online. My new character was set to start out on the long… six years long at this point which, if we were following the […]

I have been enjoying the new mode in League of Legends. “All random all middle” is even more frantic fun than Dominion, although almost all strategy is gone in favor of tactics. You can reroll your champion every few games, so it is not fully random. This is especially a good thing for people who [...]

ARAM is a post from: Kill Ten Rats

If you are spending $0 on a game, and the economy is working great for the company and the players who are paying money, but your favored currency is not retaining value well, that means the economy is working. “Working” applies both in the sense of in-game supply and demand (there is WAY more supply [...]

The F2P In-Game Economy is a post from: Kill Ten Rats

Just about two months back it was announced that Google Reader was going to be shut down. The reasons given were declining usage and the Bizarro world excuse that killing it would lead to a better user experience. I cannot speak to the former, except to say that Google pushed a lot of people off […]

Dàchéng believes I don't know the difference between toys and games. But not only am I very well aware of that difference, I also believe that he didn't consider the possibility of somebody playing...

We asked Cryptic Studios to walk us through their development process, from inception to implementation. Also, any examples on something cut rather than making it live? Lindsay Haven, System Designer, please take it away: Because we have so many creative people that work here in the studio, and each idea is different, not every feature [...]

[NW] Development at Cryptic is a post from: Kill Ten Rats

Temporarily, the crazy refugees of Southsun Cove have come up with possibly the most masochistic game in Tyria. Surrounded by hostile wildlife that is attacking each and every settlement (at least the omelet-free ones), the free peoples have decided to design a game around a small Succulent Crab, which seems like one of the favorite [...]

[GW2] The Crab Grab Hustle is a post from: Kill Ten Rats

Whatever happened, we need to find out why it happened. But clearly it should not have happened. -Rep. Steny Hoyer (D-Maryland) We are reaching that time of the year when the sun is shining and various members of our regular Saturday night instance group are sometimes lured outside to see the world, visit relatives, or […]

As Azuriel always disagrees with me in the comment section of my blog :) , it is worth mentioning that I fully agree with his post on Instant Gratification vs Fun Investment. So much that I'd even...

Whew!  The tougher half of the work week is over.  A substitute does not know when and where work will be available.  Sometimes, I can go without a chance to work for a week or...

There are many ways to view the Secret of Southsun update. The most objective is ArenaNet has added an hour or so of content, and then you are done. This is the worst way to experience Guild Wars 2. In another view, it’s easy to see that Southsun has become the de facto hotspot for some time. [...]

[GW2] Secret of Southsun Impressions is a post from: Kill Ten Rats

A few years back, at the height of the housing boom, we decided to move.  We listed our house at the market price for our neighborhood, and the first day on the market we got an offer for roughly 60% of what we were asking.  Somebody sensed, as we all were beginning to at that […]

There has been some renewed discussions on the "evils of Free2Play" following the news that Rift is changing its business model and like so many others will abandon subscriptions. In the context of...

Over the years I have repeatedly on this blog proposed the idea of having a game that mixes MMORPG and Trading Card Game elements together. So when Cryptozoic did a Kickstarter for a MMO Trading Card...

Or so says the press release. My ambivalence towards the game continues however. I like the connection with EVE Online, the idea of continuing the struggle on the surface of planets, the possibilities of the combined in-game markets, and, most of all, the idea of bombing DUST players from orbit while in my spaceship just […]

I was wrong. Another subscription MMO caves in, unable to make a go of things on monthly fees alone.  Or they feel that the grass must surely be greener on the free to play side of the fence. Of course, my prediction was back when Scott Hartsman was still on board and before they put […]

When you read a review of a video game, almost always there are comments about the graphics: How do the characters look, how are they animated, how do their surroundings look, and how do things like...

Before the mob’s attention is diverted to Southsun, the vocal players on the Guild Wars 2 forums appear to be unhappy with the ending of Flame & Frost. It distills down to “4 months and we just get a few bonfires”. That’s a lot of distillation, and even in the final hours of Flame & [...]

[GW2] Scope of Flame & Frost is a post from: Kill Ten Rats

Last week my focus was a huge game of Civilization V. Early in the week I started a few games on the largest map size (going with the Lakes option, so lots of land warfare) with a dozen competing civilizations and the usual complement of city states until I got a situation that looked good.  […]

There are certain games which would be impossible to play without randomness, for example Poker. And personally I like some degree of randomness in tactical games, because it adds to replayability if...

I'm up for a reasonably busy week at work but, if I'm going to work hard, it seems only right that I'm able to play hard as well.  Thanks to Marvel Heroes having an open beta weekend, this wish...

I'm planning on running a huge "sandbox" adventure for my D&D campaign, using Wizard of the Coast's boxed set Madness at Gardmore Abbey. Basically that is a huge abbey complex on a hill with lots...

As I mentioned yesterday, Cardhunter is a game about a group of people playing Dungeons & Dragons. At one point their usual DM Gary is replaced by his elder brother Melvin, who makes the players...

After having made sure that there is no NDA (the beta forum is even public) I want to tell you some more about Cardhunter. You could say that it is a game about a game, you are playing a group of...

As I geared up for day two in Tera (should I capitalize those letters since it's short for The Exiled Realm Of Arborea?) I touched up yesterday's blog entry... and before I could launch the game, it...

It was just a year ago that Syp kicked off his Newbie Blogger Initiative plan. The idea was to inflict blogging on as many newcomers as possible by getting a bunch of old cranks to give semi-useful and often contradictory advice about blogging.  And link whoring. As is clear from that, I went for a […]

So far this week has not bee full of good news for Blizzard. There was the 1.08 patch for Diablo III, rolled out on US servers the day before yesterday, which was touted as bringing serious improvements to the game, including changes to the surprisingly popular auction house. Unfortunately, one side effect was the introduction […]

WildStar has a column going on called “DevSpeak”. The latest clip is about movement. “Movement?” the hardened MMO veteran in you says, “what a silly thing to advertise for your game.” In a way it is silly, but like Mr. DevSpeak says “it plays a major role in every part of the game.” (I will [...]

[WS] Dat Double Jump is a post from: Kill Ten Rats