KillTenRats - Ethic
March 12, 2010
08:11
I have a confession that I’m a little embarrassed about. Yes, you guessed it, I’ve been playing WOW. I haven’t been spreading that around too much, because of the stigma associated with it. I imagine the next time someone yells at me to “Go back to WOW”, it might actually sting a [...]
Categories: Bloggers
00:17
I got my snark out of the way. Before I continue, let’s rewind a little bit to the Volume 3, Book 1 Prologue. The Oath of the Rangers starts off with a journey to Rivendell, where I eventually met with Lord Elrond to discuss a letter sent by Lady Galadriel regarding Aragorn’s need for the [...]
Categories: Bloggers
March 11, 2010
16:01
(I asked Dan Gray if he would want to touch on the subject of random developer updates. He was kind enough to oblige, and here is his great contribution to random week. –Ravious)
In the age of 140 character communication it’s becoming standard practice for developers to tease their audience with sporadic tidbits of information, be [...]
Categories: Bloggers
01:14
A question and a few notes from a closet Trekkie to any others who may be playing this game -
* If this is set 30 years after Nemesis, and 22 years after Romulus was destroyed, how is Spock narrating it when he was sent to a parallel universe shortly thereafter?
* While the ground fight [...]
Categories: Bloggers
01:07
The network effect is one of those critically important, foundational concepts needed to discuss the success or failure of multiplayer games intelligently, one that gets more “what?” reactions than it should. I’m hoping people know it but perhaps not by that name; knowing it by name lets you tap a century of research and [...]
Categories: Bloggers
March 10, 2010
21:38
Chapter 1
(The protagonist, Me, runs in to the cave and meets with Radanir, the Ranger.)
Me: I am so glad I found you. Aragorn, your leader, has need of you in Rohan. You must go there at once.
Radanir: Of course, Aragorn’s will be done. However, there’s some orcs in this here cave. They are too close to the elf outpost. [...]
Categories: Bloggers
16:02
As soon as any MMO player hears the word random applied to the MMO genre, as it has been throughout random week, thoughts of the loot pinata spring to mind. Every time a little dirt weasel falls to the ground a right click tears that sucker open to reveal: a melted candle, a shiny red apple, a [...]
Categories: Bloggers
March 9, 2010
15:01
I love food. For anybody that knows me, I think everything can be analogized to food. Thankfully Ethic keeps me in check here, for without him this would probably be Kill Ten Rats and Grill. Well this is random week, and here is my one random topic thinly veiled as a gamer topic. Gamer food [...]
Categories: Bloggers
04:13
While it’s safe to say I’m an avid LoTRO player, I’ve found myself at a loss for things to do lately, even after a major patch (which took me under 4 hours to complete all solo/group content). So to keep myself from fatal burnout, I decided to take advantage of the City of Heroes/Villains [...]
Categories: Bloggers
March 8, 2010
16:23
Welcome to rand() week at Kill Ten Rats unknowingly sponsored by Leala Turkey of Spouse Aggro fame. For those sane enough not to have scratched much of the surface of spreadsheet programs or number intensive programming, rand() is a random number generator. And this week, I will be talking about randomness, choosing random topics, and [...]
Categories: Bloggers
March 7, 2010
06:29
A friend of mine has dolls that she treats as children. They each have personalities, wardrobes, adventures, etc. She posts about them on the assorted social networking sites. I sometimes find this odd until I remind myself that we are doing the exact same thing, probably for more hours per day, only [...]
Categories: Bloggers
March 6, 2010
21:49
… you gotta learn to play it right.
Major props to the guys who did that masterpiece.
Categories: Bloggers
March 5, 2010
02:03
I was going to try a positive spin on Cryptic’s approach, but Sente covered it, so let’s pull that up from the comments:
The philosophy that Cryptic has applied here is one that is “player-driven development” in the sense that feedback from the players should drive much of the development of the game.
I think it is [...]
Categories: Bloggers
March 4, 2010
20:23
The big gaming news this week is easily Activision’s firing of the Infinity Ward heads, and the storytelling lawsuit by the two fired against Activision. Infinity Ward heads the Call of Duty franchise, which is one of the three Activision franchises accounting for a gross proportion of the corporation’s income. World of Warcraft and Guitar [...]
Categories: Bloggers
06:53
(yup)
If you haven’t heard, WoW is reworking its mechanics and stats a great deal when Cataclysm comes around. Take a look. Nice post.
It’s silly to generally judge all these changes as a whole and form an opinion right this second about them, because no one outside Blizzard has seen these new mechanics at work. Of [...]
Categories: Bloggers
March 3, 2010
14:51
I can’t stop raving about Wizardblox. Other MMOs need this pronto. It gets even better when my wife plays Wizardblox and all of the sudden I see a gift pop up on my Wizard101 screen telling me she just sent me 100 gold or so. It’s a funny hypocrisy, but I hate getting crap in [...]
Categories: Bloggers
11:46
Suppose people are disappointed with your product. Suppose it’s an MMORPG and people are arguing whether it’s really an MMORPG or not. People are claiming they’ve been ripped off. People are upset. Seems like a price-cut will make everyone happy right? No, not necessarily. You won’t find copies of [...]
Categories: Bloggers
March 2, 2010
02:16
This weekend is double-xp and welcome back in City of Heroes/Villains. Issue 17 is not live yet. The free time starts Thursday, but get your download done in advance because waiting on updates is not fun.
: Zubon
Categories: Bloggers
March 1, 2010
15:00
I decided to fire up Wizard101 after being reinvigorated by WizardBlox and having a bit of downtime in other games. In Lord of the Rings Online, I am tired of the solo end game (Legendary Items), and I have for the most part stopped playing except for kinship events where I still have a blast [...]
Categories: Bloggers
February 26, 2010
13:57
Before I begin with Guild Wars 2 news, be sure to check out the huge skill balancing update to Guild Wars 1. A lot of people worked very hard on balancing extremely popular (and therefore touchy) farming skills, buffing entire lines of skills, and working on the balance across the PvP formats a bit more. [...]
Categories: Bloggers
February 25, 2010
14:44
Congrats to Arkenor, Jeco, and Ryver. You should get the code shortly. I’ll try to do this again sometime for those that didn’t win, and next time I’ll amass more codes. :)
It’s been a slow week of thought and news. What’s really happening just doesn’t move me to write, and all the podcasts I am [...]
Categories: Bloggers
February 23, 2010
18:21
Ethic is too modest and shy to announce his foresight, but he picked up some Gods and Heroes pre-order boxes on the cheap after it was canceled. He gave me one, which I have kept in my desk drawer so I would be ready for the fateful day that has arrived.
: [...]
Categories: Bloggers
14:02
I am a monogamistic bloke when it comes to joining a guild for an MMO. I dislike playing alts to begin with, but being a member in two guilds for one game seems even more like alting. It seems discordant with my usual MMO goal of making human connections across the electronic ether.
My first MMO, [...]
Categories: Bloggers
February 22, 2010
18:00
In response to my teaming up with Massively to ask Community Managers about bloggers, Massively decided to backstab me and turn the tables. I felt like the Scout in the Meet the Spy video answering questions and playing with knives. Go check it out!
–Ravious
Categories: Bloggers
14:17
I’ve definitely succumbed to all the good tips for my iThing. It is sucking up more of my time, but that was time spent staring out a train window or watching a pot boil. I’ve always been a fan of MMO podcasts, and I’ve tried to keep up with my favorites. Yet, it feels like [...]
Categories: Bloggers
February 21, 2010
04:54
The pay shop model is very visibly in the process of learning painful lessons. This is a joke. This is a debacle. Cryptic did a last-minute emergency abort on the planned debacle of charging a subscription fee for a game lacking in content then putting all the new content in the cash [...]
Categories: Bloggers
February 19, 2010
17:20
Valve’s lesser evil between pirates and cheaters is the former. Cheaters, in their words, are a much more serious threat. Yet, it’s really interesting to see where other companies are focusing their efforts to an exorbitant degree.
–Ravious
Categories: Bloggers
February 18, 2010
14:31
My wife gave me an iPod touch for Valentine’s Day. I was so surprised I was speechless. I don’t think I have ever received such a nice, unexpected gift. She gave me an iPod case first, and my first idiotic thought was not that I would get an iPod touch next… it was “well this [...]
Categories: Bloggers
10:45
My husband has been playing the open beta for Mortal Online for the last week. All throughout this process he has been excitedly showing me everything that’s going on in his game time and talking about the game non-stop. For example, he was excited to tell me about how he was chopping at [...]
Categories: Bloggers
February 17, 2010
17:19
One thing I love for developers to do in MMOs is utilize pre-existing content. Sure, I love new content with new lore and new mobs as much as the next guy, but I also have a soft spot for nostalgia. When big daddy Blizzard refurbishes pre-existing content and uses it as a selling point for [...]
Categories: Bloggers
February 16, 2010
22:32
A big reason I fear I will never play Mass Effect 2, or similar games, is that the story is personalized. I don’t like leaving paths unexplored. What if I killed the Texas-talking lizard? What if I ignored their water supply? I hate those “what ifs.” It leaves me the feeling that I did not [...]
Categories: Bloggers
February 15, 2010
20:47
This last weekend during the Canthan New Year for Guild Wars I made it to multiple celestial summonings (where I got goody bags for our district feeding the beast things like half-digested boot consomme) and completed the festival quests on multiple characters (netting more goodies). I tore apart countless fortunes in the hopes that one [...]
Categories: Bloggers
February 13, 2010
07:02
Citizens of Egypt,
Just a short newsletter about a new “social experiment” that we’re about to try. But first, I need to talk to you about “Dunbar’s Number.”
Anthropologist Robin Dunbar hypothesized that there are certain stable sizes that groups of humans tend to naturally form. Depending on the type of group (extended [...]
Categories: Bloggers
February 12, 2010
15:09
Lord of the Rings Online legendary item system has always rubbed me the wrong way. In most other MMOs, with work and people, I can plan out my character to the pixel. Then it becomes a budgeting process where I evaluate the estimated time per milestone accomplishment whereupon I reorder said milestones to constantly feed [...]
Categories: Bloggers
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