Posts filed under 'Games'
So, I’ve been a bit busy. Once I get done with what I’ve been working on, I’ll reformat some earlier, useless-for-the-project drafts and post ‘em. In the meantime, I’ve not been gaming all that much.
Problem One: The TV in the living room no longer plays nice with my Xbox or PS2. I am really not looking to upgrade to an HD set in the near future, so getting a 360 is out of the question until then. I could talk about my fun time slowly beating FFXII via RF adapter, but it’s not that fun via RF on an ancient tube.
Probelm Two: I obsessively play MMOs. Not to the catass extent, but if I’m engaged in playing an MMO, I play at least twice or thrice a week. This tends to cut into “second job research gig” time. My main gaming achievement is being able to do every level of the game mentioned in this post in one pass.
Problem Three: I’m not really paying too much attention to the industry. My goofing off online time is spent trying to keep up with various forums and whatnot.
Bottom Line: Once I’m done with this project (or at least done for the time being), I expect to spend more time, actually, you know, gaming. I’m really looking forward to the changes that LoTRO has had since I last played in the fall. I might actually get Steam to play Audiosurf. It’s just too much fun and too nifty to pass up. Maybe this old rig will even run the games in the Orange Box.
So yeah. More updates of a varied nature to come. Really. I mean it this time.
February 13th, 2008
My daughter is now sitting in our laps while we play the various games associated with her favorite shows. She’s not ready for driving the controls yet, but she enjoys watching and helping by pointing at what we should do. It turns out that some of these games are actually quite fun.
Take, for example, this game at pbskids.org. It’s a rather simple platformer. George jumps on a pogo stick, you add or remove crates to help him reach items that are floating in the game space. There are limited physics — if he hits something instead of clearing it, he jumps in the opposite direction until he hits something or reaches the edge. At the end of each round, you can see the items you collected filling a shelf.
For some reason, this is really addictive. I’ve even found myself playing it when she’s not awake, just to get better at guiding the damn monkey through the board without having to backtrack to get a missed object. It’s almost like the game is trying to teach kids some of the triggers of video games at large.
1. Gain skill at moving about
This game involves control over the terrain as opposed to the character, but really, that terrain control is how you steer George on his item-collecting mission. I can see how this would be frustrating for a really young child, and quite honestly, there are times when it angers me too. However, hearing the monkey laugh when he grabs an item is enough reward to make it acceptable.
2. Collect stuff
Let’s face it, filling your shelves is a great goal. It really replicates the loot-centric attitude of most diku-based MMOs. This particular game is buggy, however, once you add items to each shelf, you cannot fill the holes between those items with subsequent run-throughs.
3. Casual play is ok, but hardcore play == teh win.
Ok, not really. But damn, I can see how this would drive you to master moving the monkey around. The slight “bump” sound that plays when he collides with an obstacle is just enough to make my inner achiever cringe. I can proudly say that I can now run through all six of the initial stages on one pass with no backtracking. I am 99% sure that’s sad.
At any rate, this is the first kiddie game that is really compelling to me. WTG, pbskids.org
January 16th, 2008
Raph posted a link to Sean Howard’s Three Hunded Mechanics page. He also posted a link to a game made based on one of those mechanics, Lost In The Static. The game is rather nifty once you get used to viewing white noise on top of white noise. When your eyes adjust, it’s a rather addictive exploring game that reminds me of Montezuma’s Revenge or Pitfall. I’ve manged to waste several hours today playing around with the game. My favorite thing, it turns out, is “dying” largely because the animation is great. The music is also nice, and sets the mood of the game quite well.
November 24th, 2007
So although I’ve been really out of it as far as game and law blogging goes, I just read Lum’s article about the whole Jade Raymond debacle and actually have a few things to say. First and foremost, I wonder if this whole situation has been blown out of proportion. Not by Lum, but by the gaming “press” in general. Ok, so she’s an attractive woman who is also a producer at Ubisoft. She’s well-spoken and did what many game producers do — promote their games. The game bloggers predictably went one of two directions: 1) ZOMG SHE IS HOT and 2) How dare Ubi exploit her to sell games?!!@!!!one!!!! Then the infamous web comic surfaces in the wake of a rumor that she was going to pose in Maxim.
This is where things get stupid — after the break.
I’ve seen the comic. The artist has talent, but the comic itself is pretty damn repugnant. Since this is the Intartubes, it’s been posted all over the place, and still exists out there despite Ubi’s best efforts to remove it. Those best efforts include sending a cease and desist order to SomethingAwful.com. Anyone who has ever read SA knows that Lowtax will capitalize on that kind of thing, which basically means that Ubi drew MORE attention to the comic. The part that seems even yet still more stupid to me is that Ubi doesn’t really have any standing to demand a takedown or a cease and desist.
If this comic had involved the use of copyrighted images, then Ubi could have simply issued a DMCA takedown notice. The thing is that the artist didn’t use any of those images, so no dice for Ubi there. Clearly, their lawyers realized this and sent the C&D notice instead. However, the C&D notice is basically sturm und drang. There is pretty clear case law from the SCOTUS that protects the comic, no matter how abhorrent the content may be. For those that aren’t well-versed in Constitutional law, I’ll simply refer to the film. Remember The People v. Larry Flynt? A big part of the film is about Falwell’s lawsuit against Hustler for defamation. Hustler used a parody of a Campari ad that depicted Falwell talking about having sex with his mother. The gist of the Court’s decision was that parody and satire are protected by the First Amendment. I don’t see how this webcomic is any different. If we want to protect speech, we have to protect all of it, even the distasteful and unpopular stuff. The First Amendment is not a pick-and-choose proposition.
This case law is not some obscure bit of maritime law. This is something that every lawyer should know. So I’m left wondering why the Ubitorneys sent a C&D to SA. A cynical man might say that they were trying to cash in on every bit of hype, negative or positive, that they could to push Assassin’s Creed. Another take on it could be that, yes Virginia, there are very few smart lawyers. I’m sure that that the real answer lies somewhere in the middle. For all we know, Ubi could have been sending C&Ds out to “avenge” Jade Raymond.
At any rate, I find the whole situation pretty exemplary of how far the game industry has yet to go. Heck, it’s really a good example of how far most corporations have to go. Sexism is still very real, and while a female producer for a big name title may be newsworthy/noteworthy, it really shouldn’t be. We need more women in the industry and we also need more sensitivity on the part of the people who follow the industry. This specific situation only serves to set things back a bit and give more eyes to the seamy side of the gaming public. Basically, this is like a Second Life scandal, except more pathetic and dorky because it’s happening in the real world and not via teledildonics.
November 20th, 2007
Tobold has a good post about random events in MMOs. Grimwell also has some thoughts about the idea. They both make good points about why you’d want more up-front or behind-the-scenes random rolls to increase the chaos and unpredictability of games, but they also stay in the “traditional MMO” vein for the most part. That’s fine, because those are the games we have to deal with. At the same time, I think we need to move away from the “standard” level or skill-based system with random to-hit rolls at its core.
My idea is certainly nothing new. “Give us something different that does not suck.” Clearly, the implementation of that idea has been problematic for developers. Many of the things that I’d like to see in MMOs are likely niche ideas. I would like to see a new system for spellcasting that forces players to make choices between huge magic (and the chance of dying) or safer magic without much oomph. Heck, make me aim. Make me aim spells and physical attacks.
The requirement of aiming would actually work well with Tobold’s “react to random actions that monsters take” idea. So the humanoid foozle you’re slaying raises his shield? Aim for the legs. If the point of increasing randomness in a game is simply to make it less of a system of mashing hotkeys to fire off abilities in the same order every time, why don’t we get rid of the hotkey mashing altogether? At some point, I think the traditional MMO combat and special ability models get stale. Random draws from a card deck are still hotkeys….but, you know, with less order.
Anyway, that’s my two cents. Perhaps I’ll add more later this evening, but my basic take on things is, “Let’s not keep trying to polish a turd/put lipstick on a pig. Let’s do something different with MMO combat that moves away from hotkeys.” I really like the idea of requiring some skill.
July 23rd, 2007
Ok, maybe not. But if you ask the Church of England, Resistance: Fall of Man certainly fits the bill. Since I’m not made of cash, I haven’t purchased a PS3. Besides, without an HDTV it seems almost pointless to get one. Apparently, there is a scene in the game that takes place in Manchester Cathedral. And boy is the Church of England pissed. Apparently, they expected the game’s designers to get permission before doing something like that.
But when you think about it, what “demons/zombies/other” apocalypse game or film doesn’t have a scene in a church?
At any rate, the Church expects that Sony will pull the game off of shelves in the U.K. That would be a bad thing, because then the PS3 shelf at most game stores would only have ONE game sitting there.
June 10th, 2007
I’ve been watching the latest Eve Online drama with great interest. Not too long ago, it came out that a developer at CCP (the makers of Eve) had supplied one of the biggest and most notorious player alliances with shiny items. CCP initially denied that this happened, then when the dev in question, T20, came out and admitted it, CCP ‘fessed up and created an Internal Affairs division to police their, uh, police. In this latest installment, we have allegations of rigged RP events, an alliance with a “MSN chat hotline” to the devs, and some possibly questionable actions by an employee named CCP Sharkbait. We also have a detailed and slightly vitriolic response from CCP, with a barely veiled threat of legal action against Goonfleet, the main proponent of anti-CCP sentiment during this latest dramabomb. Since I’m not an Eve player, I am glad that this has been amply covered in the above linked threads and articles. What interests me is moreso what I perceive as the overall theme of the Goon mentality and why it is instructive for MMOs — from the gamey ones to the worldy ones.
I’ll start by saying that I am not a big fan of Internet exceptionalism. I feel, in general, that new laws for the Internet are flawed and silly, and that, really, we can simply adapt existing systems to fit the challenges presented by a largely anonymous distributed network. For some reason, people take the Internet very seriously. Once a Goon-ism, and now an Internet meme, “The Internet is Serious Business.” This statement always seems to hold true for the players/users of MMOGs and Virtual World clients. People believe in the magic circle that surrounds these experiences, creating an unwritten code of conduct that cannot and should not be broken. Unfortunately for them, that circle has long since crumbled, and likely never existed.
The SA Goons, whose current and most visible incarnation outside the Something Awful forums is Goonfleet/Goonswarm, seem to approach the MMOGs and VWs they inhabit with a “it’s just an internet game” mentality. Granted, this is sometimes disingenious — the current drama with CCP certainly seems to indicate that they DO at very least care about their digital playgrounds. I’m unable to find the link, but somewhere, some poster has described the Goons as being akin to Internet Dadaism. I’d imagine that many of their detractors wouldn’t go so far as to describe them as such, but there is a bit of credence to the comparison. Their activities in Second Life (under the name of W-HAT) are generally absurd and poke fun at the seriousness of the highly-invested Residents. They have been called “terrorists” and “griefers.” Things aren’t much different in Eve, it seems. However, what is interesting is that they are currently invested in a major war with the 800 lb. internet space gorilla of the game, Band of Brothers. This war has exposed just how deeply the ties between players and developers go, largely via major dramabombs.
All of this drama exposes the absurdity of taking the Internet too seriously, or being an Internet exceptionalist. (I like fancy phraseology.) People are so invested in their game lives that they seem, at least on the various and sundry messageboards, to be highly agitated that the Goons would expose what may be systematic corruption, or at very least incompetence on the part of CCP. The fact that CCP would threaten legal action (which, outside of proving libel with a malicious intent would likely fail) means that even the developers of the game are a bit too invested in the drama and politics of their digital world. After all, one man’s grief is another’s slapstick. And, as stated above, the Internet is Serious Business. For a recreational activity, it seems like it’s not very fun.
So here’s what I’ve learned from watching the Goons interact with Second Life and a bit more vicariously through their interactions with Eve Online: exceptionalism only clouds the issue when it comes to activity on the Internet. If the truly invested would look past their abject dislike/hatred for those who don’t take things seriously, I think they’d see the elephant in the room — a business is a business is a business, and running one ethically is important, regardless of whether it’s a tiny web startup, a reasonably successful online game, or a major corporation. Just because some of these businesses exist online or in a virtual world or wherever, that doesn’t mean that they’re any different than brick and mortar stores or companies. Looking at the Internet as an exceptional situation is short-sighted at best and likely conducive to the creation of crap laws and even more crap regulations.
It’s great to take things seriously, but when you feel your blood pressure rising due to Internet recreation, maybe it’s time to go out in the yard and have a game of catch.
May 31st, 2007
This post is somewhat inspired by one at Brian Green’s blog (which appears to be not loading for me right now….so I don’t have a link to the specific post.) A recent weekend design challenge involved the little extras that used to come with games. It got me thinking about what I really enjoyed from the games of yore, and today, while driving to the store, I realized one thing that I really miss. I miss the little “anti-piracy key validator” things that used to come with games. Sometimes it was “find word 3 on line 10 of page 30 of the manual.” Sometimes it was a code wheel, or a matrix of codes. The most recent game that I can recall that used this system was Uplink. It came with a black on black code matrix card. It was very nice to see something other than “enter your CD Key” when installing the game. Sure, many of these code dealios would just end up copied to the web for those who refuse to buy their games, but I rather miss having nifty stuff like that in my game boxes.
May 15th, 2007
Ok, so maybe the title isn’t great. And yes, this came out over the weekend. Consider this yet another check mark in the “All The News That’s Late To Print” column. Lum has some great comments about it over at Broken Toys. He brings up some pretty interesting points, and a few of them require some further delving.
For those who haven’t clicked through to Lum’s site, here’s the basics: Last year, Linden Lab made it possible to create a user account without a credit card. Before that, the credit card was your age verification. Second Life is 18+, Teen Second Life is for the thirteen to seventeen set. It turns out, however, that Second Life has TONS OF SMUT. I’m talking truckloads. And now, Linden Lab has realized that some CYA is in order. My thoughts are after the jump.
Before I offend a hardcore SL user, let me clarify: Second Life is full of cool stuff and it is also laden with smut. Basically, it’s kind of like the internet, but it’s easier to simulate having sex. Ever since Linden Lab made it possible to create an account without some kind of credit card, users have claimed that an increasing number of teens have been accessing the main grid, and not the teen grid. This is generally a bad thing, largely because of the smutty aspects of the world. This generally wouldn’t be a major cause for alarm. Looking at porn in Second Life is pretty much the same as looking at porn on Sublime Directory or swiping your dad’s Playboy stash. At least, that’s how it should be. The fact of the matter is that the vast majority of sexual kinks are also represented in the world. This includes stuff like so-called “age play.” For those who aren’t versed in Internet euphemisms, age play is when one person models his or her avatar to resemble a child…and then has pixelsex with an adult avatar.
Yes, this is largely considered to be icky (for values of icky that are approaching ZOMG fucking disgusting), and the vast majority of Second Life residents aren’t exactly happy that age play even occurs. However, whether SL is a hotbed of disgusting sexual predilections isn’t the point of this post. It’s important to keep in mind that there is some smut in SL, largely because that’s what is causing Linden Lab to open up a major can of worms.
Last week, Linden Lab announced that it will be using the identity-verification services of a company called Integrity. Users will not be required to register with Integrity unless they wish to visit areas that are flagged as “adult.” The Second Life world is already split into PG and Mature areas. This adult flag will be a new division, to be used at the option of landowners. The problem is that the flag itself isn’t entirely optional. Landowners whose land contains adult content must flag their land as adult. Of course, the definition of adult content is vague at best. According to this Official Linden Blog post, “‘Adult Content’ is that which is overtly, graphically, or explicitly sexual in nature or intensely violent.” Basically, this seems to include any of the aforementioned smutty content. Heck, it even includes some of the PvP areas of the world. I am left wondering whether this was really thought through by Linden Lab.
Vague standards and rules are the hallmark of virtual communities, but it sure seems at first glance that Linden Lab is taking a pretty big step away from the service provider status that it touts as its “get out of jail free” card. It has told users that, “Landowners are morally and legally responsible for the content displayed and the behavior taking place on their land.” On one hand, this sounds like an attempt to stay in the happy, safe harbor of the service provider. The fact that the identity verification is voluntary lends some validity to the idea. Following that logic, Linden Lab doesn’t police its content, it simply provides users with the tools to police their own content. For all intents and purposes, that’s enough to remain a service provider.
On the other hand, land owners with adult content who fail to flag their land as adult are likely facing disciplinary action from Linden Lab. I really think that Linden Lab is walking a fine line at this point, largely because if the community remains vigilant about reporting unflagged land, Linden Lab will effectively be monitoring and policing the content on its servers. Moreover, Linden Lab has plenty of mechanisms in place to know what content is on its servers. There comes a point where Linden Lab cannot or should not be able to assert that it is not at least partially responsible for the content on its servers. Of course, accepting that responsibility makes it difficult to assert that the company is merely a service provider. Then again, their search function is so lousy, maybe they really don’t know what is on their servers.
Take, for example, the child porn that was discovered by the German media. I don’t doubt that Linden Lab and its employees had no idea that stuff was there. Someone clearly was aware that people were engaging in age play, because it is now forbidden to make your parcel searchable via that term. I have no earthly idea if there’s any correlation between age play and child porn, but my guess is that there’s some crossover. Linden Lab has taken prompt action, and that is a good thing. Obviously, this is part of the impetus for their new ID-verification system. However, that won’t stop age play. It also won’t stop child porn. Interestingly enough, even virtual child porn is illegal in countries like Germany, so it’s entirely possible that communities like the age players could expose Linden Lab to some kind of liability overseas. Certainly, the ID-verification system can’t protect Linden Lab entirely, and the system itself may have issues.
The system itself seems a bit hinky. First and foremost, the company that will administer it is not Linden Lab. As I mentioned above, it’s a third party company called Integrity. Integrity is actually a division of Aristotle, a company that provides services to political action committees and political campaigns. Some residents have misgivings about giving their information to this third party. My main problem with them is that their privacy policy is very vague and doesn’t seem to apply to the ID-verification service. Additionally, the means of verifying age (for U.S. citizens) is giving them the last four numbers of your SSN. Given the voter lists and other services that the parent company provides, my guess is that these guys are somewhat of a data warehouse. Either that, or they buy the information from other data aggregators like Choicepoint and Acxiom. While I am sure that they don’t intend to do harm with the information that they collect, they certainly seem to be, at best, on the fringes of the privacy world. I have an inherent distrust of data aggregators and feel that they tend to not adequately minimize the data they store. In fact, their entire business model is built upon having as much information about an individual as possible.
So, is this system just useless kludge piled atop Second Life’s functional kludge? Most likely. Will it make the grid more secure? Probably not. At the end of the day, people who aren’t verified will not be able to access the lion’s share of the grid, which makes compliance almost required. If Linden Lab is truly concerned about cleaning up the grid, perhaps it should actively police things and give up the charade that it’s only a service provider. Even as a service provider, it’s possible that Linden Lab will end up finding itself liable for the acts of its citizens via reasoning similar to the logic that brought us the Grokster opinion. But that is a whole other can of worms.
May 11th, 2007
Tomorrow, May 1, will be the one-week anniversary of the launch of Lord of the Rings Online. I’ve written about the game before, and now having played through the open beta, brought those characters to the live game and mucked about in that for a week, I guess I’m ready to write about it once more. This time around, I played one character of each race to the pre-launch levelling cap, and have since settled into a one main, three alt pattern of play.
I’ll try to keep this short and stick to a “good,” “meh,” “ugly” format.
The Good
This game runs on my dinosaur of a machine. I have a decent setup as far as RAM and processor speed goes, but my video card is ancient. Since the box doesn’t have PCI-E, it’s tough to find an AGP card that matches my specific AGP slot, etc. At any rate, I run the game on a Radeon 9000 with a whopping 64 megs of RAM and it works just fine. I do get the occasional three-second freeze, but maybe once a session. Since huge crowds fighting in CoX give me a slideshow effect, I have to think this is a good job on Turbine’s part and not just the longevity of a legacy video card.
The video stuff is good because the starting areas for each race are content-heavy, both in the realm of graphics and of quests. Each area gives a specific flavor to the races (barring the human area which is fittingly vanilla), and the quest storylines and behavior of the NPCs lends to that. In Erud Luin, the combined elf and dwarf starter area, you see each race’s role in the epic storyline prolouge. The interaction between the two races is well-done, down to the “elves and dwarves don’t always get along” apsects. In the Shire, you find yourself doing things like delivering mail and pies, as well as helping the various Inns find the ingredients for their best beers. Even if I keep my hobbit burglar in the land of alts, I’m going to have to go and complete the Inn tasks for each of my characters — the title of “Shire Brewmaster” is something to be cherished.
The Meh
Sometimes combat feels a bit hinky. I had just managed to tune it out when a thread over at f13 revealed to me the problem — some of your attacks are timed against the “server tick” and not the client one. So, basically, it feels like your abilities take a bit to fire off. This isn’t so bad for my hunter — he just squeezes off an autoattack shot or two while the next special cues up. For other classes, it is more noticeable — primarily on my minstrel, where that tick issue causes you to receive a “target is out of range” message where you shouldn’t receive one.
Also a bit hinky is something that I can’t quite put my finger on. On one hand, it seems that many players are stuck in the “holy trinity” mindset — I see plenty of grouping requests where a group is looking for one or two specific classes. By creating a very nifty low-magic world, I think Turbine has done a great job. However, I wonder if it also confuses many players.
Of my four characters, three heal and one doesn’t. Two of those heals are self-only, leaving only my minstrel as a primary healer in groups. Never mind that he has a ton of useful songs as well — stuff is usually dead before he gets a chance to fire most of them off. Basically, he ends up staring at health bars. This translates into people expecting minstrels to act as the “heal bot” that has greatly trivialized support play in most MMO titles. CoX still takes the cake for having useful and fun support classes.
One problem that seems to effect every class is the tightness of the economy. Stuff is simply expensive. In order to keep enough cash to buy new skills, it’s sometimes necessary to save every copper. On most of my characters, I just cut a path of death on my way to every quest…the vendor trash loot is plentiful and adds up quickly. The big problem comes when trying to raise crafting skills, but I will get to that below. The main “meh” problem of the econonmy is that as you ramp up in levels, the cost for new skills increases dramatically. Also, the cost of equipping traits skyrockets. My hunter has a class-trait that would cost about 65s to equip…for an attack speed increase of 0.1 and 0.2 seconds on two different skills. At that price, the 22s cost to equip a racial trait seems almost cheap.
While I don’t necessarily think that levelling should mean “you get every skill NOW,” I do think that the way costs ramp up creates a strong disincentive for grouping. You simply do not get the same amount of loot while grouped. Since most income comes from that dropped loot, you pretty much need to solo a bit to get some cash. This is fine for me, I enjoy simply hunting creatures — especially now that I can use some of their rare drops for crafting. I can see how some people’s playstyles may be seriously stymied by the current economy. That could lead to problems down the road for Turbine, but I guess we’ll see around the one month past launch mark. From the looks of the official forums, they’re certainly on notice in re: the economy.
The Ugly
Crafting is broken. Yes, that is pretty dramatic, but kind of true. In order to turn off a money faucet related to farming (the tradeskill, not the grinding activity), Turbine changed the output of the “make more seeds” recipe from three seeds to one. Since a single field of crop requires six seeds, this made a huge difference. Seeds for even the lowest-tier crops start out over 1 silver. When you add in water and fertilizer, you’re looking at close to ten silver per field. Having a high rate of return when processing plants back to seed meant that you could eventually hit a self-sustaining stride. All you had to buy at that point was water and fertilizer. Apparently this also resulted in people getting rich in the higher tiers of skill. I never got there.
The specific farming change is only an example of a larger problem — crafting materials are ridiculously expensive. I found a grocer (not a typical crafting vendor) that sells all of the crafting materials for half price. Other than this one, solitary NPC, there’s just a universe of expensive materials out there. Cloth for first tier tailoring? Over 1 silver per piece. Wax for processing wood? 48 copper per, but that does add up. Coal? Over 2 silver from what I understand. At this point, my most successful crafters are those who gather raw materials (ore, wood, hides) and then use those materials to create items. I’m sure that as I advance, I’ll have to start buying components from vendors, but at least at lower tiers of experience, I’m finding some professions that can self-sustain or at least mail each other items back and forth.
By far, the expense of crafting is my biggest beef. I’ve not had much success at the Auction Hall, but I’ll also admit that I’m hoarding the lion’s share of my materials for leveling my own skills or helping out people in my kinship. It certainly seems that I’ll have to play the economic game if I’m to keep my characters skilled up and able to afford shiny things like mounts further down the line. That’s fine for me, as it doesn’t interfere with my playstyle. I do think that it takes away from the game’s overall accessibility.
The Conclusion
I am happy with my purchase so far. The fact that my monthly fee is only $9.99 is also rather nice. While LoTRO is fine for me, I do fear that some of the confusing and costly elements of the game may turn off others. Even if it doesn’t hit my 400k subscriptions prediction, I think LoTRO can exist for quite a while on whatever subscriber numbers it eventually attains — I don’t see this one dropping below 150k players anytime soon. The economy is Turbine’s biggest albatross right now, and should be addressed post-haste. One simple fix is to allow more loot for groups — right now there’s not much incentive to group unless you are required to do so. If the loot drops were ramped up in frequency, or if everyone was able to get loot off the same corpse, the hardcore groupers would be able to keep up in the cash department. On the whole, the game is enjoyable, but I do look forward to some polishing in the months to come.
April 30th, 2007
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