Bloggers

The CFC goes to war on a simple, tested strategy: grind the moons down, and only later bother grinding sov. Hostiles should be either massacred or blueballed to ensure their playing experience is ruined. Relentless metagaming should take place such that the conflict is as demoralizing and unfair as possible. To us, sov is essentially […]

If you are contemplating a career in programming games, you need to be aware that it isn't necessarily easier or has shorter hours than programming let's say financial software, but it pays a lot...

From questions in the comments section I realized I didn't do a very good job to explain what Card Hunter is to all those not in the closed beta. When people hear that it is a mix between a...

I'm so deep in the poorhouse right now that it's not even funny - I vastly overestimated my disposable income when I shelled out for a Nintendo 3DS XL last week.  However, as it turns out, this...

I have argued before that seeing a game’s achievements tells you a bit about how the developers expect you to play and therefore whether you are likely to enjoy their game design. Even without explicit categories, you can see that a game awards achievements for beating the game, for 100% completion, for beating bosses with [...]

500 / 23 = ~22 is a post from: Kill Ten Rats

It’s hard for me to diagnose whether my general preference for the XBox One over PS4′s announcement is built upon fact, or upon the general idea that I am, apparently,

Edward CastronovaSteen and Owens ground play in human evolution. Now sociologist Robert Bellah makes play not just any element of human evolution but a core element of it. From play, he believes, springs almost all culture, including the topic I steadfastly refuse to bring up on this blog because of the anger it generates among TN readers; therefore I will not raise it here. It is the topic that Tolkien also believed was intimately bound up with fantasy and subcreation. Recently in First Things, a scholarly magazine about the unspeakable topic I am not discussing, scholarly experts on that topic discuss...

Perpetual optimism is a force multiplier. -Colin Powell Everybody thinks their side is winning. There is a huge temptation to look at the last battle, the last kill vs. loss report, the last sovereignty change and to pronounce that one side couldn’t possibly winning because look how badly they just did.  That is what most […]

I was in a shop this weekend, holding a "Nintendo 3DS with Fire Emblem Awakening Pre-Installed" in my hands, but ended up not buying it. I am pretty sure that I would enjoy playing Fire Emblem. But...

I love Card Hunter, currently in closed beta. So much that I gave them more money than I considered necessary to play comfortably, just because I wanted to vote with my wallet for the game. You see,...

We had a request for League of Legends Tribunal highlights, and SynCaine linked to a guildmate’s post. I clicked a few “warning” punishments from my case history, and this one stood out. You can view Tribunal records even if you are not a logged-in LoL player, but just in case this link does not work [...]

[LoL] Toxicity Case Study is a post from: Kill Ten Rats

I am back to having 4v5 games 50% of the time in League of Legends, so I am giving it up for at least a few months. It is a roaring mix of people who never connect to the game, miss the first 5-10 minutes, AFK after one tower goes town, intentionally feed, wait at [...]

[LoL] Leaving is a post from: Kill Ten Rats

TEST and its numerous allies, after losing the hotly contested J5A system, have started pushing back hard on the CFC foothold on the eastern edge Fountain. This morning there were a number of fleets in motion laying what appeared to be traps and counter traps.  The CFC had a Caracal fleet out shooting structures.  TEST […]

League of Legends has a simple vocabulary for praise and abuse. “That” before something means “is very good or inherently overpowered.” “This” before something means “is very bad or inherently useless.” You’re in the middle of a game and don’t have time to type a lot of invective, but the most important thing in the [...]

[LoL] Efficient Communication is a post from: Kill Ten Rats

There wasn’t anything before MUD1… Richard Bartle on MUDs, from the Birth of MMOs interview That is the best I could do in trying to extract an inflammatory, out of context quote from the article. (Hey, it inflamed at least one guy.) That aside, the linked article is an interesting read, though you may already […]

Edward CastronovaMicrosoft announced that it is retiring its virtual currency, Microsoft Points. This follows Facebook abandoning Facebook credits. Companies are trying to figure when and where it makes sense to have your own currency. The thing about a rewards-type currency, such as Microsoft Points, is that it adds a click to the buying process. Put in your credit card, buy Points, buy games (or movies or whatever). MS is saying, why not have it be just: Put in your credit card, buy games. What after all is the point of having the virtual currency in there? Perhaps we are laready moving...

I found it very interesting as I was mind-drafting this post to find that Jeromai had already covered just about everything I had to say about Dragon Ball. It’s a good read, and I want to reiterate some of the points to both players and ArenaNet. Hints to Players Your First Team Will Suck – [...]

[GW2] Dragon Ball Hints and Tips is a post from: Kill Ten Rats

Keen is reviewing the PS4 vs. XBox One, and says "Always online, 24-hour check-ins, no used games, etc just don’t bother me. Computer game DRM never seemed to cause any problems for me despite the...

I'm weak; I just could not wait for some GameFly games to get here, and my Brain Age title was programmed to only want to see me for maybe a half-hour a day, so I decided to download another...

Another day, another 1,000+ ship fight in Fountain. Screen shots from Gaff, who was there in a Caracal. That is pretty much a giant battle every day for the first week of the campaign in Fountain.  A hectic pace for a what will no doubt end up being a long war of attrition. Filed under: […]

Syp is pondering the age of console MMOs, but says: "As a non-console player, I’m only excited about this in a detached, historical sense.". I don't share that detachment. For me the question is not...

Well, I feel sort of sheepish about mentioning how sporadic and random my work schedule was last week because, quite suddenly, substitute work has nearly dried up completely, and I find myself with a...

Hey, I can take fuel out of the jump bridge! What is the password for the bubble on the gate? How do I use FoF missiles? -What voice coms are like when we don’t have a solid mission A couple of years back I was having some sort of comment thread argument with SyCaine about […]

The newest Guild Wars 2 festival is upon us. The Dragon Bash Festival is a couple week event centered mostly around Lion’s Arch and surrounding areas. It is beautiful, fun, and tiring all at once. There are some fantastic moments and rough edges as is likely to be expected in an MMO where new content [...]

[GW2] Smashing, Bashing is a post from: Kill Ten Rats

So Microsoft replied to their perceived defeat at E3 by stating: "We're trying to do something pretty big in terms of moving the industry forward for console gaming into the digital world. We believe...

People who study fun in games, gamification, and how to motivate people have written a lot about the concept of intrinsic vs. extrinsic rewards. The idea is that something which is inherently more...

The crew running TorilMUD just announced that they have a beta HTML 5 web client available for people to try out.  It offers some pretty reasonable features. Scripts in the Cloud: Create aliases and triggers once on the web client and use them from anywhere. Script packages: Organize scripts into “packages” that are shared throughout […]

The time has come, the day is here.  Trion Worlds has followed through on their plan and changed Rift from a monthly subscription game into yet another contestant on the free to play field. I actually have not been playing Rift for a while now.  Not because of the business model transition, but because our […]

Interesting article in Time about XBone vs. PS4: The author speculates that while Sony's policies on disc based DRM might make them popular now, it could backfire in the long run. On a PS4 the disc...

There are a lot of gaming publications declaring Sony's PS4 "having won" E3 against Microsoft's XBone. The PS4 is cheaper, has no phone-home-once-per-day DRM (but it does have disc-based DRM!), and...

Quite often when I start an internet browser I want to search for some information. Thus I set my homepage everywhere to be iGoogle, which gives me direct access to the Google search engine, plus all...

Fresh on the heels of my considering giving up mainstream gaming, I've picked up a few indy games, and it only cost me a quarter as much as it did when I tried to get into Marvel Heroes and...

In the previous session the players had entered the dungeon below Castle Ravenloft in search of the crypt of vampire lord Count Strahd von Zarovich. Having had two fights already, they started this...

Today at E3 it was dueling presentations between Microsoft’s Xbox One and Sony’s PlayStation 4. Microsoft went first.  I think this sums it up. Remember that Sony had all day to soak in MS's presentation and KNOW they were about to destroy them. How good a day was that for them?— Chris Hanel (@ChrisHanel) June […]

Today at E3 it was dueling presentations between Microsoft’s Xbox One and Sony’s PlayStation 4. Microsoft went first.  I think this sums it up. Remember that Sony had all day to soak in MS's presentation and KNOW they were about to destroy them. How good a day was that for them?— Chris Hanel (@ChrisHanel) June […]

Eric at Elder Game is just winning all over the place in a post that covers a variety of balance topics. Two sample quotes: I haven’t played much in years, but as far as I can tell, post Cataclysm, [WoW's] balancing plan has been to say “fuck solo balance, we’ll just make it insanely easy [...]

Quote Mine is a post from: Kill Ten Rats

DoraTheExplora Taft > Log the fuck in and get your friends in!  Ill be raffling plexes away at random to people if we get over 900 in our fleets.  Ill start off with 5 plexes and add an extra plex to each additional 50 pilots we get. -A TEST motivational technique in action The war […]

DoraTheExplora Taft > Log the fuck in and get your friends in!  Ill be raffling plexes away at random to people if we get over 900 in our fleets.  Ill start off with 5 plexes and add an extra plex to each additional 50 pilots we get. -A TEST motivational technique in action The war […]

Blizzard sent me a promotional offer where they are offering everybody services like character transfers to other servers for half price. And that got me wondering where this is going. Fact is that...

Continuing further in Prime World: Defenders has answered some questions. Yes, the rarer towers are unambiguously better than the basic ones. Early on, my mostly upgraded wooden tower was boring but practical. As a great lover of DoTs, my fully upgraded poison tower is awesome yet practical, but the better towers are generally of the [...]

Prime Grind is a post from: Kill Ten Rats

MY PEOPLE: TEST is vowing to stand down and cede us J5A, leaving the first ‘battle’ of Fountain to us. Why? Of 900 online in their alliance, barely more than 300 are in Karan, their new lowsec staging point. Our response to this will be more sieging and flaying. TEST is vowing to return for […]

MY PEOPLE: TEST is vowing to stand down and cede us J5A, leaving the first ‘battle’ of Fountain to us. Why? Of 900 online in their alliance, barely more than 300 are in Karan, their new lowsec staging point. Our response to this will be more sieging and flaying. TEST is vowing to return for […]

My free time has come to mirror my work schedule: random and spontaneous. As a substitute, I don't work regular hours.  The day before yesterday was a split shift, the day after just 4 hours,...

I was keen to get down to the staging base for the was in Fountain.  So as soon as I could get into the game, I started looking for a convoy op that was headed down to B-DBYQ, the initial CFC base of operations for the war.  I remember the delopment to Delve last year […]

I was keen to get down to the staging base for the was in Fountain.  So as soon as I could get into the game, I started looking for a convoy op that was headed down to B-DBYQ, the initial CFC base of operations for the war.  I remember the delopment to Delve last year […]

Arnold Schwarzenegger as Conan the Barbarian, when asked what is best in life, responded with the famous quote: "To crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and to hear the lamentation of...

A reader sent me a funny YouTube video on 300 Heroes, a Chinese game that not only blatantly rips off League of Legends, but then populates it with characters stolen from all sorts of other works, up...

I've written a lot about the importance of in-game community lately. But, allow me to write a bit about the type of community that isn't in a game or owned by a particular company. Maybe we can get draw some lessons that might come back around to game design. So, let's talk about blogging, and the community around that. As the title asks: where did the bloggers go?

Post copyright Brian 'Psychochild' Green. Visit the post to participate in the comments: The other online community: where did MMO bloggers go?

We’re going to war. This is a fact we can’t ignore. We’re going to war. In case you hadn’t heard before, I think they think we’re going to war. We’re going to war. I think they think we’re going to war. We’re going to war. We’re going to war. We’re going to war! The War […]

We’re going to war. This is a fact we can’t ignore. We’re going to war. In case you hadn’t heard before, I think they think we’re going to war. We’re going to war. I think they think we’re going to war. We’re going to war. We’re going to war. We’re going to war! The War […]