All Posts by ladyattis

And I thought the multi-character MUDs and MUD clients was bad. o_O

I have cautious optimism for TCoS for the simple fact that after listening to one interview with them talking about how they actually went through about four 'forks' of the game to get what they wanted shows two things: a young company that's building a tool set to work on future projects and a company that is willing to spend money on vital work to make a product that is worth the purchase. It's development cycle seems to be much unlike AoCs in which Gaute literally gutted the work that came from pre-2006 to redo it in what we know of today (both in pruned classes and lost content and maps). Thus, both companies and development projects from the outside seem to exhibit different traits and behaviors (FC had the behavior of a badly managed company and AoC a badly managed development project. TCoS and its developing company by comparision have the behavior of a decently (but unexperienced) managed company and project).

What may kill TCoS is the lack of public awareness and not its current development state, which is where the cautious part of my optimism comes into play. Along with the worry of whether or not they got cash investments over bank loans to fund key parts of development which could put a damper on long term success (and profit).

This is why I have to wonder why do folks even listen to 'pro'-athletes? o_O

Yeah, it's Tuesday US/Western Hemisphere dateline side, which makes it Monday Eastern Hemisphere dateline side.

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Originally posted by djnexus
What time does the SE headstart, start on tuesday? im on the eastern timezone. Thanks

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I think we get in the day after CE because the headstart for SE is three days prior to regular launch (the 18th?).

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Originally posted by sanicek
wasd + cone of fire (swing/cast/whatever) +pvp = fps analogue pvp = circle strafing

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Originally posted by Jefferson81

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Originally posted by catmaykate

Osaka, Japan is not 3rd world. Japan has one of the fastest networks in the world
 
That or dont BS in your profile.

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Europe = the 1st world
North America = the 2nd world
All the rest = the 3rd world

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But I agree, Japan is more technically advanced than the US.

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Not really. The US leads in nanotechnology, semiconductors, and certain medical research. The rest is a mixture of European nations and Canada (they're pretty much the leader in robotics).

1. [Insert Any Generic F2P Grinder].
2. DDO [Yeah, it has nice bones, but no meat].
3. [Insert Any Generic P2P Themepark].

Thanks for the chuckle and the smile. :)

I'm going have to give it to CCP despite it all, maybe for me my favorite expansion to EVE had to have been Red Moon Rising. It actually made drones more effective (but at a cost of reduced numbers of them), so I loved pulling missions with my Vexor back them. :3

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Originally posted by erandur

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Originally posted by Litigator_AB

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Originally posted by erandur

And of course, Funcom is the only company doing bad these days? ;)

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Funcom exists in an industry that should not be beaten up by the general global recession.  The gaming industry and tech overall are still analyzed and trade on fundamentals.  At least in large part. 
Lit

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I could be wrong (I probably am) but isn't Funcom located somewhere in Northern Europe? So they don't suffer from the recession, but from the weak dollar/strong euro.
Either way, if they really did loose 50% that's a sure sign their going down. Fast. :) My guess, they'll sell AoC before it gets so far, possibly change the name of their company, and try to start over.

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Wrong, all fiat currencies have slid down because of the global recession. Those that are partially backed in gold like the Euro have slid the least (because of the perceived inherent value of gold and silver).

Hell, even the British pound has taken a beating and BOE has been bailing out national chains or simply buying up failed ones to cover the fiat fiasco.

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Originally posted by tvalentine

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Originally posted by ladyattis

Sorry for being a word purist here, but hacking isn't what you think it means. Hacking is like making your toaster telling you it's done by whistling. Or making your pop machine tell you how many given pops are left by a site you can access on the Web.
What you're describing is called cracking, as in to break into to undermine the contents of a given system or set of systems. Be it encryption (like the Allied Forces did in WW2) or be corporate espionage, that is what cracking is.
So, please stop misusing terms. :(

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the only meaning ive heard from the term "Hacking" is when somebody's account gets hacked, and the person who hacked it sells everything and sends it to his main. I have NEVER heard your definition of hacking or cracking, ever. And i have never heard of a MMORPG being hacked.

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Hacking as it was used in the past was due to the fact that some programmers simply 'hacked' on code to give it functionality it didn't have before.

Wiki article

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Hack has several meanings in the technology and computer science fields. It may refer to a clever or quick fix to a computer program problem, or to a clumsy or inelegant solution to a problem. The term is also used to refer to a modification of a program or device to give the user access to features that were otherwise unavailable, such as DIY circuit bending.

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Sorry for being a word purist here, but hacking isn't what you think it means. Hacking is like making your toaster telling you it's done by whistling. Or making your pop machine tell you how many given pops are left by a site you can access on the Web.

What you're describing is called cracking, as in to break into to undermine the contents of a given system or set of systems. Be it encryption (like the Allied Forces did in WW2) or be corporate espionage, that is what cracking is.

So, please stop misusing terms. :(

Witch Elf is female only, but the other classes I don't believe have gender restrictions save for the Goblins and Orcs having no gender therefore the restrictions are meaningless.

Edit: But Chosen and Marauder are male only unfortunately.

Now, it's true you can buy games like TF2 and other multiplayer games in any old store (even Wal*Mart), but those sales are starting to wane in regards to progressive growth year after year since it's becoming easier to download the installer straight from the website or from the company's own tracker.

I'm not trying to bash boxed sales, rather I just think the traditional release cycle and the attempt to drum up hype around an MMO makes little sense in light of what an MMO and other multiplayer/online-only games offer as their primary function: access to a service which entertains. Why not just offer a trial with the client to be downloaded? Or offer a 5 or 10 dollar "test drive" of a given MMO (15 days or whatever [or to a level cap]) instead of trying to trick players into buying the client and making them feel stupid when the game doesn't mesh with their own tastes/sensibilities? Maybe I just don't get it. So what do you all think?

Nothing and when WAR comes out probably nothing until they offer a trial to everyone before I even think of buying the damn thing. After the fiasco of AoC, I will not be just throwing my dollars to any old developer. Demo/trial or no deal.

1) Tabula Rasa.
2) Age of Conan.
3) Vanguard.
4) Lord of the Rings Online.
5) Everquest 2.

Yes, only for certain large scale ships and campaigns where they make sense. In this case, specifically as bridge crew. General crew obviously will be NPC driven.

Branching is the name of the game here.

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I was thinking about this quote in another thread relating what the OP thought what needed to be removed for MMOs to flourish and retain a veteran/seasoned population. This quote in particular is a response to that list, which I believe encapsulated the entired issue about linear questing/story-telling in the proper context. Consider how in many single player games they follow linear paths with an unfolding story. Now, that's all well and good for a single player game because the developers are largely focusing on the game play aspects of the game itself, so the story often is written either to parallel the key features of the game play or to simply help the nerdier folks feel 'immersed' in the game (giving objectives or goals that have to be met, or reasons for doing the objectives or goals in the first place).

What is the story was part of the game play? What if deciding to do X over Y does something to the game world? Whether it's a single player game or an MMO such a feature often gets truncated because of the assumed 'bad' side effect of unintended behavior(s) from the PC and NPC respectively. Whether the 'bad' side effect means a player cannot go back to a location to seemingly complete/turn-in a quest, or the player cannot use a given item or resource they regularly used before. But to combat that 'bad' side effect, making the branching generative, where from one decision new decisions are opened up by a meta-AI (an AI that controls the other AIs in-game) to prevent dead ends or loops (where the conditions of one's decision making leads to a perpetual state that is self-contained where no further progress can be made outside of the given sub-states).

Thus, such a branching and generative structure to story telling could lead to a persist game world, where one's actions do matter. It's not computationally hard to design such a system, considering most of this exists as genetic algorithms and artificial life programs. The question remains: which developer has the balls to take on such a development project?

Nice gameplay footage, but I hate the over-the-top avatar design. I think I can look past that since I love the colour palette though (quite a contrast of the warm and cool colours). :3