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One of the joys of Rift, to at least some players, is its soul system. While there are four classic archetypes, warrior, cleric, mage, and rogue, each of those can be outfitted with three souls, chosen from a list of eight, to create a character customized to your needs and wishes. Some rejoiced at this [...]

While I have been thoroughly enjoying Zubon’s adventures through Guild Wars, I had hung up my spurs some time ago. I had vowed to return to the game when the Winds of Change portion of Guild Wars: Beyond was completed. Today marks that day. I wrote yesterday about the long journey to Guild Wars 2, where [...]

[GW] In the Eddies of the Wind is a post from: Kill Ten Rats

MrSkimpole: I was reminded that music never got better than this http://t.co/BdWdEDmC

You do not need a comparative advantage to enjoy the benefits of trade, nor does your trading partner. Even if you can do absolutely everything better and more efficiently than I can, it will still benefit you to trade with me because you do not have the option of doing everything at once. I may [...]

Newb Boon is a post from: Kill Ten Rats

One thing to think about when writing and running adventures for pen & paper roleplaying games like Dungeons & Dragons 4E is what you hand out for rewards. Different DMs have different approaches...

MrSkimpole: @rainbow_dog quite a bit more

MrSkimpole: @rainbow_dog and also very, very freaky

MrSkimpole: @rainbow_dog it's a great ending, but kind of ambivalent. you could like or hate it

MrSkimpole: Homunculus 15 volumes, complete http://t.co/Iqwa2Uvb

The economic war continues. We of the CFC versus Raiden and their allies in an effort to deny each other the economic largesse of tech moon profits. It is a war of timers and time zones as each side attempts to disrupt production and destroy infrastructure. And so the call went out again for another [...]

A more open beta weekend is coming. Of course it appears that this is not the first beta event, but it appears to be the first one that can be discussed by the players. Or rather press, only select press are “in general” being let talk about their beta experience. While Martin Kerstein did say [...]

[GW2] With Beta’d Breath is a post from: Kill Ten Rats

I've been reading through the first stand-alone D&D 4E adventure released by WotC and frankly, it sucks. There is one village, two non-combat encounters, and 24 battles. Most of them lined up one...

I picked up a somewhat recent DC comics collection from the library recently. Reading it, I realized I was not sure which apocalypse it came after. For most of my life, DC Comics has been resetting its world frequently. They do a multi-year story counting down to the apocalypse, a year-long apocalypse, and then a [...]

Shedding the Illusion is a post from: Kill Ten Rats

MrSkimpole: One of those rare masterpieces in their respective genre.

MrSkimpole: Homunculus 14 and 15 got translated. The series is completed. This is another of those rare epic achievements.

Me and all my friends finished school years ago. Based on that representative sample I am quite certain that nobody goes to school any more these days! Does this sound slightly crazy to you? The...

MrSkimpole: @67_ChevyImpala camomilla!

MrSkimpole: @67_ChevyImpala dov'e' che nuoti?

And just because I am on something of an EVE trajectory again, here is a new EVE trailer that CCP just put up.   Filed under: entertainment, EVE Online Tagged: CCP, YouTube

In a relatively rare bit of Skyrim criticism, Chris Sims talks about how the open-ended nature of Skyrim, combined with the mutability of its many choices, led him to lose interest in the game. I think this is a good critique of many of the things I say arguing for open worlds, options, player choices, [...]

Lost in the Sandbox is a post from: Kill Ten Rats

CCP has another post up dragging out statistics from EVE Online. Amongst the numbers was the fact that players in the game manufactured 62 billion missiles in 2011, from which comes that 7 million missiles an hour metric. Excluding shuttles and frigates, the mighty Drake battlecruiser was the most produced ship in the game last [...]

MMORPGs are fun. Even if we sometimes complain about this or that, overall we end up spending hundreds or even thousands of hours with these games, which we presumably wouldn't do if there wasn't any...

I have played a bit of Agricola recently. It drives home the appeal of virtual worlds and persistent online games in that it very much is neither. You do not always want that persistence, but Agricola is an economic game that ends potentially open-ended and just as everything is coming together. You set up your [...]

The Illusion of Persistence is a post from: Kill Ten Rats

The call for a fleet op was out.  Timers on some of our reinforced towers would be ticking down soon and the enemy was expected to show up and contest the systems to destroy the towers. There was to be an alpha fleet as the main force and a Drake fleet in support. Having fitted [...]

I've not been feeling too well lately. My better half came home with some sort of plague that made her lose her voice and become bedridden. I've mostly been worn out, not sure if it's from me taking care of her or some form of her plague trying to drag me down. Either way, I've been trying to get some extra rest in. I've managed to play some MMOs, though. And, I've realized something: I'm pretty good at playing MMOs.

Post copyright Brian 'Psychochild' Green. Visit the post to participate in the comments: I’m pretty good at playing MMOs

A Tale in the Desert was the first game I played that used multiple chat tabs. It worked differently than most games: non-customizable, and each saved recent message history so that it effectively included the game’s whisper and mail systems. A Tale in the Desert also allowed multiple guilds, and each guild got its own [...]

Chat Windows is a post from: Kill Ten Rats

Over the weekend the enthusiasm of me and the other players in my pen & paper roleplaying group for changing to Dungeons & Dragons 4th Edition grew, and as a result we are starting to play tonight....

MrSkimpole: I just wanted to say: Madonna and zettai ryouiki

Only the Terra Novans can adequately appreciate the number of people in this Wired UK list who are involved in play, simulation, virtual worlds or things related (economics, network science, etc.) Minecraft, Sid Meier, etc. Check it out.

One positive change between campaigns is that women eventually got more armor in their armor. At least, it did for Rangers, the class I have been focused on; I flipped through the casters, and they might be cold in the North. You can see in the gallery that men still tend to be more covered, [...]

[GW] The Accumulation of Cloth is a post from: Kill Ten Rats

This weekend is Star Trek Online’s Second Anniversary Event.  As part of the event, STO is giving away the new Odyssey class Starship for free. Having returned to STO since it went free to play, it was an opportunity not to pass up.  Although the Odyssey requires Vice Admiral (currently Level 50, the top rank), [...]

Canthan New Year has introduced me to one of the weirdest pieces of game design I have ever seen. You can buy tickets for minigames on the boardwalk. There are three games, and there is no other use for tickets. One of the games is an unexciting whack-a-mole, and it costs 1 ticket to play [...]

[GW] Tickets is a post from: Kill Ten Rats

In the 2001 census in Britain, "Jedi" was the 4th largest religion. Even if probably most of them were just making fun of the government the specific choice of "Jedi" over some other fictional...

There is a war going on somewhere. I know this because it has been broadcast via corporation mail. We have been told to knock off all that carebear crap, get out there and stick it to the enemy. So don’t rat, don’t mine, and stay the hell out of empire space because some other alliance [...]

It’s official: per CFO Eric Brown, during an earnings conference call, SWTOR is making a lot of money, with 1.7m subscribers (which Brown went to an unusual effort to quantify correctly as a mix of paying customers and customers with … Continue reading →

Trion dropped a big patch in Rift earlier this week, and like all such patches, not everything went as planned.  So we have the first post-patch hotfix already that addresses a list of issues. Among the fixes were a few directed at the new wedding and marriage system. WEDDINGS * Wedding Rings now get converted [...]

Combat is an important part of many different games, including role-playing games. While games without combat are possible, see for example A Tale in the Desert, they are few and far between....

It was pretty exciting to realize that you are not limited to human henchmen. You can pick up a Tengu or even a couple of rot wallows. I don’t know why I’d take them over my heroes, but they seem like a decorative touch for players in hero-less campaigns. It was disappointing to see that [...]

[GW] Henchling Variety is a post from: Kill Ten Rats

The word "amateur" has French (and ultimately Latin) roots, literally meaning "lover of". It describes somebody who does an activity out of love for it, not because he is getting paid for it. While...

Just a short note, but longtime friend of Kill Ten Rats, Rubi Bayerm headmistress of Massively, has headed off to ArenaNet! We here at our humble blog are extremely proud of Rubi, and I can honestly think of no one else in the community better suited for heading to the excellent ArenaNet team. Martin Kerstein, [...]

Rubi Heading To Higher Ground is a post from: Kill Ten Rats

MrSkimpole: RT @TroyGoodfellow: War in the East gets an expansion, because my first thought was "That game isn't nearly big enough." http://t.co/WOJ ...

Earl lives on the east coast.   So for our Saturday night groups, he starts playing a midnight while for the rest of us, who are all in California, the time is just 9pm.  And to his credit, it is usually we in the Pacific time zone who poop out first. Iron man though he [...]

Jason Wall sent me a note explaining that World of Warcraft (you've heard of it?) is doing even more to encourage the formation of ad hoc raiding groups. Back in the day, he notes, the only way you could get raid-level gear was by being in a raid-level guild and by raiding, a lot. Much was said back then (not least by me) about the way MMORPGs seemed to provide a communal experience for people isolated by contemporary society. If society gave people anomie, then online community, it seemed, was the antidote. How pollyannish! We (I) also said that online...

In yesterday's investor's earnings call, Electronic Arts said they sold over 2 million copies of Star Wars: The Old Republic, and had 1.7 million subscribers. I'm not quite sure at what moment in...

The Luxon are a nomadic people in Guild Wars who use giant turtles. When I first saw one, I immediately wanted to tame it as a pet. Then I noticed that it was being used as a beast of burden. And Dungeon Siege thought it was so fancy with its pack mules. Guild Wars 2 [...]

[GW] Turtle Power is a post from: Kill Ten Rats

Much has been discussed on this blog on the relative advantages and disadvantages of linear games versus open world games. Skyrim was widely hailed as a great open world game, but it also serves as...

MrSkimpole: @Squirrelpunkd obliquely, I guess

MrSkimpole: @Squirrelpunkd uhm, Bakker has something to tell you as well... I guess you should know

MrSkimpole: "Of course, all fictional worlds are deterministic, and they all have a authorial “god” who writes their story."

MrSkimpole: The story is no longer about how they struggled and overcame adversity."