Tobold
A blog mostly about MMORPG ( Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games ) and other games I'm currently playing. Please read my Terms of Service
http://tobolds.blogspot.com/
URL
Last update
1 hour 20 min agoSeptember 2, 2010
08:01
So Square Enix found and fixed the bug in the Final Fantasy XIV beta and decided to start the open beta today. Which would be good news if you could actually get into the open beta, which you can't:...
Categories: Bloggers
07:53
Direct2Drive is celebrating its 6th anniversary with 4 weeks of sales. Every week different games are on offer for $6 each. Now the general idea of such a sale is that you don't know what games will...
Categories: Bloggers
September 1, 2010
08:55
The Final Fantasy XIV open beta, which should have started today, has been postponed because, oh my god, the devs found a bug!!! Obviously you can't release a beta with a bug in it, so the open beta...
Categories: Bloggers
08:04
07:19
I am currently playing mostly A Tale in the Desert, and occasionally a bit of World of Warcraft. I'll be playing Final Fantasy XIV next, and then Cataclysm. How about you? What are you currently...
Categories: Bloggers
August 31, 2010
09:30
Wolfshead is again posting a long rant on how everything was better in the past, or more specifically how the original Everquest was the best game ever, and all newer games are just shallow pieces of...
Categories: Bloggers
08:16
Gordon from We Fly Spitfires is wondering how it comes that some people are discovering EQ2 only now, that it went Free2Play, when in fact the game is older than WoW (by two weeks). He thinks that...
Categories: Bloggers
August 30, 2010
09:29
I got married yesterday, but only in virtual life, and not to somebody else: I married my main character and my second character in A Tale in the Desert. ATitD probably has the most extreme...
Categories: Bloggers
08:25
The best number on APB players I could find was that All Points Bulletin has 130,000 "registered users". Note that this isn't "subscribers", but basically represents the box sales, each box coming...
Categories: Bloggers
August 29, 2010
05:30
Readers were asking me about what was so bad about All Points Bulletin as game that it failed so miserably, and I didn't have an answer. I never played the game, which shouldn't surprise anybody,...
Categories: Bloggers
August 28, 2010
07:12
Blogger recently installed an automatic comment spam filter. Unfortunately it doesn't work all that well, and frequently puts a comment in quarantaine which isn't spam at all. The comment doesn't...
Categories: Bloggers
August 27, 2010
11:01
MMO Fallout is reporting on bitter ex employees blaming their management for the failure of All Points Bulletin. I've seen that happening a lot, and always found that discussion a bit one-sided, as...
Categories: Bloggers
10:42
All MMORPGs have some sort of limitation of what a single character can do. That is useful in as far as it fosters cooperation between players. But it also enables a different solution: A single...
Categories: Bloggers
08:09
Final Fantasy XIV, to be released in a month, caused some furore among gamers by announcing their "fatigue" system: Any character gets full experience points only for 8 hours per week, plus...
Categories: Bloggers
August 26, 2010
10:36
Stardock is often cited as making games without copy protection, having even drafted a gamer's bill of rights. But then of course not every game is equally likely to get pirated in the first place,...
Categories: Bloggers
09:02
The strongest point of A Tale in the Desert is the huge number of different activities which actually have different gameplay, ranging from easy “click to gather” to extremely complex mini-games. I...
Categories: Bloggers
05:30
The Paypal donation button on the top right of my blog is more a social experiment than a serious attempt to make money. I learned a lot about donations and blogs since I have it, for example that if...
Categories: Bloggers
August 25, 2010
19:15
Tycho from Penny Arcade kicked off a heavy debate with the statement that "I honestly can't figure out how buying a used game was any better than piracy." His argument is that buying an original game...
Categories: Bloggers
10:06
The Guardian Gamesblog has an interesting article about immersion in games, talking about the importance of getting the details right to make a virtual world believable. They quote an article by Toby...
Categories: Bloggers
07:30
In detail, the expansion is Wrath of the Lich King, which is finally going to be released in China, after 2 years of delays and troubles with the authorities.
Assuming that the Chinese players are...
Categories: Bloggers
August 24, 2010
08:55
Cryptic Studios announced that their next MMORPG would be Neverwinter Nights, based on 4th edition Dungeon & Dragons rules, and using player-created content. I am having a hard time to understand why...
Categories: Bloggers
08:15
One thing which is unique to A Tale in the Desert is that the code can be changed while the game is running. There is no scheduled downtime for maintenance like in other games, the servers are...
Categories: Bloggers
07:58
Through discussion with readers I realized that sometimes it is hard to explain what you are actually doing in a MMORPG, because we tend to take descriptive shortcuts. For example you might say that...
Categories: Bloggers
August 23, 2010
12:50
The UK defence secretary, whose ministry of defence apparently is in charge of regulating video games with military in it, finally realized that in a multiplayer game somebody has to play the bad...
Categories: Bloggers
10:00
Title says it all, I have a bunch of random thoughts on MMORPGs in my head, and don't really want to write a separate post for each of them. So instead I post my incoherent ramblings in this...
Categories: Bloggers
05:30
Larísa from the Pink Pigtail Inn reports on Blizzard's plans to allow players of World of Warcraft to voluntarily play at a lower level, for example to be able to better play together with friends of...
Categories: Bloggers
August 22, 2010
17:17
Technology in A Tale in the Desert is making good progress, having recently reached the metal age. So I'm busy playing the mining mini-game, the charcoal mini-game, and then smelting iron and copper...
Categories: Bloggers
August 20, 2010
07:53
Like Tipa I have been trying out Clone Wars Adventures, SOE's latest game. In many ways CWA resembles Free Realms, being a game designed mostly for children, full of mini-games, and running from a...
Categories: Bloggers
05:30
In the English language, as well as in several other languages, the Genitive case gets somewhat imprecise when used for a compound noun. Thus “Tobold's MMORPG Blog” can be read as “Tobold's Blog...
Categories: Bloggers
August 19, 2010
09:56
I first found David Edery’s interesting post on aggressive Free2Play monetization via an entry from spinks on Buzz, but then Ravious from Kill Ten Rats also discussed it. And I couldn’t help but...
Categories: Bloggers
August 18, 2010
07:47
The Oxford dictionary defines a quest as "a long or arduous search for something; (in medieval romance) an expedition made by a knight to accomplish a prescribed task". They define heroic as...
Categories: Bloggers
05:30
I tend to play around 20 hours per week, and that is rather constant and does not much depend on what game I’m playing at the moment, because my gaming hours depend on what goes on in my real life,...
Categories: Bloggers
August 17, 2010
17:11
It is certainly true that in many cases the exact amount of damage done by video game piracy is difficult or even impossible to determine. Fortunately in the case of Blizzard winning the lawsuit...
Categories: Bloggers
07:56
It is safe to say that the market for glyphs in World of Warcraft isn't working as intended. Far from being a fun tradeskill which players find useful, sometimes make a bit of gold with, and which...
Categories: Bloggers
07:31
While we're in this discussion of copy-rights and -wrongs, I would like to grab that opportunity to talk about bloggoleechification. The word doesn't exist. In fact, I made sure before I wrote this...
Categories: Bloggers
August 16, 2010
08:12
I believe in most of the basic tenets of capitalism, including the one that says that companies making profits is a good thing, because without profits they'd fire all their employees and can't...
Categories: Bloggers
August 15, 2010
06:52
This weekend in A Tale in the Desert the technology was researched which opened up the Test of the Obelisk. Tests in ATitD have two parts to it: A simpler list of tasks you can do to "demonstrate the...
Categories: Bloggers
August 14, 2010
14:41
The Ancient Gaming Noob asks how so many World of Warcraft accounts get hacked. I'm not sure, but I did notice that in my GMail spam folder these days a *huge* number of mails are World of Warcraft...
Categories: Bloggers
05:30
You know the MMO blogosphere is in a summer slump when the hot topic of the week is why WAR failed. The theories range from "because it was a WoW clone" to "because it just wasn't very good" to...
Categories: Bloggers
August 13, 2010
22:14
In the interest of full disclosure, I just received an unexpected present in A Tale in the Desert: A GM appeared and gave me a press account. Apparently they liked my game diary. :) So it appears...
Categories: Bloggers
07:58
On my sixth day in the 5th telling of A Tale in the Desert I met spinks from Spinksville. That was nice, because I am a fan of her blog, and we hadn't met in other games before. Helpful as ever,...
Categories: Bloggers
05:30
The US homicide rate is about 5 in 100,000 per year. While this is still considered as high compared to other countries with a similar standard of living, it nevertheless tells us that over 99.99% of...
Categories: Bloggers
August 12, 2010
08:10
So by day 5 of my adventures in the virtual desert of A Tale in the Desert I'm beginning to settle in. My main activity on this day consisted of gathering and crafting basic resources and then using...
Categories: Bloggers
05:30
Both Keen and The Ancient Gaming Noob are writing about Everquest Next, and in particular the idea SOE has to make a new Everquest which has "all the good parts" of EQ1 without having the bad parts....
Categories: Bloggers
August 11, 2010
08:07
The virtual Egypt of A Tale in the Desert is huge. On day 4 of my desert adventures I spent a whole 5-hour playing session running through Egypt. The plan was to visit the various Universities of...
Categories: Bloggers
05:30
Probably due to the usual summer slump in MMORPG gaming, the MMO blogosphere has erupted in another round of discussion on failure of MMORPGs. That discussion pops up from time to time, but always...
Categories: Bloggers
August 10, 2010
08:44
Day 3 of my adventures in the desert brought more progress, but also some setback. While I had been offline, Sterope, the region I settled in, had finished the research on stone cutting. And a group...
Categories: Bloggers
05:30
Ardol from the WoW Philosophized blog has an interesting post up on Caillois-complete games. According to the French philosopher Roger Caillois a game is "complete" if it is optional and free of...
Categories: Bloggers
August 9, 2010
10:36
No doubt some of you are wondering what the heck a player is doing all day in a game like A Tale in the Desert, which has no quests and no monsters to kill. So I’ll explain a bit taking my second day...
Categories: Bloggers
08:02
The Ancient Gaming Noob Wilhelm2451 has the best summary of the latest EVE story: In EVE game time cards exist as in-game item, called PLEX. They used to be safe, but recently they were changed to be...
Categories: Bloggers
Recent comments
6 days 5 hours ago
Posted by: Stranger
1 week 5 days ago
Posted by: caleb
1 week 6 days ago
Posted by: Stranger
3 weeks 3 days ago
Posted by: Innsmouth
3 weeks 3 days ago
Posted by: JimYork
4 weeks 6 hours ago
Posted by: Stranger
4 weeks 3 days ago
Posted by: Stranger
4 weeks 3 days ago
Posted by: Stranger
6 weeks 4 days ago
Posted by: Stranger
6 weeks 6 days ago
Posted by: Innsmouth