Aww, he likes it! “Mr. I Hate Muh-mor-pig-uhs” actually likes this game.

As much as I have fond memories for EQ, I should remind you all to read the “fine print”.  For example:

• Freepers only get to play one of four races (Human, Erudite, Barbarian, Gnome)
• …and one of four classes. (Warrior, Cleric, Wizard, Rogue)
• Freepers can only create 2 characters on a given server.
• Freepers are limited with respect to bags, spells, money, and the ability to use in-game mail.
• Freepers don’t get access to in-game support. (Knowledge Base Only)

and the biggie…

• Freepers are subjected to in-game pop-up advertising.

Now for 5 dollars, you can upgrade your account to “Silver” status. (Note: former subscribers are automatically upgraded to Silver)  Which doesn’t do much for you aside from raising some of the limits mentioned above.   Silver subscribers are still subjected to in-game pop-up ads.

If you want the “full” version of the game, it’s still $14.99/month. (Seriously?  For a 13 year old game?)  The good news is that you can pay the monthy fee (or the upgrade to “Silver”) using “Station Cash” that you may have accrued from playing other SOE games.  Station Cash will also be used to purchase and unlock “freemium” content for regular and Silver subscribers.

In-game ads… No thanks.  That one “feature” is pretty much a deal breaker for me with any game. (Are you listening, Blizzard?)

Apparently, Blizzard has decided to call off Christmas Blizzcon this year.  That’s a shame, since at least one other Dragon*Con director and I were planning on attending this year, sporting the very latest in Alliance t-shirt wear and seeing if any of the resident homophobes wanted to say something about it.

Oh, but wait!  There’s more!  It seems that Bobby Kotick has come up with another scheme to add money to Blizzard’s bottom line and at the same time contributing absolutely nothing to the state of the art of online games.

Are you ready for product placement in your MMO?

Just imagine World of Warcraft with in-game advertising to go along with your monthly subscription and item store purchases.  Oh, wait, Mists of Pandaria is on the way, so you’ll get an interactive trailer for Kung Fu Panda 3 as well as a custom version of Pokemon.

(Ok, so I know that Blizz did Pandaren long before those movies came out, but since when did I let the truth stand in the way of some good snark?)

Meanwhile, the 30-day trial period for SWTOR has elapsed, and while I don’t have any firm numbers on the subject, the servers seem as populated as they have always been.  Can’t say I’ve seen a great deal of cancellations, and I’m working on getting my second character to level 50. (Imperial Sniper)  I still believe that the only thing that is going to kill off WoW is Blizzard’s own asshattery, but the gap between them and the rest of the pack is getting narrower by the day.  38 Studios is set to release Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning in the near future which promises to close that gap even further. (And did we mention that R.A. Salvatore, one of the minds behind that game, is coming to Dragon*Con this year?  Did we mention that? )

We’re about 6 weeks away from our first volunteer staff meeting, which means things are going to get a lot busier on the D*C front really soon.

Out.

-Grim

…and a new trailer.

If you haven’t already, stop by the Shii-Cho server and say hello. (Sith side, of course…)

Official pre-launch started yesterday, but they let in a bunch of people as early as Tuesday.  As a result, there is no lag, no server queues, no insane competition for newbie area spawns, and most importantly, no server crashes.

This is the smoothest launch I’ve ever seen, and I’ve seen…

• EQ2
• LOTRO
• D&D Online
• Age of Conan
• World of Warcraft
• Black Prophecy
• Champions Online
• Star Trek Online
• Pirates of the Burning Sea
• Warhammer Online

You get the idea… BioWare is doing a spectacular job, so far.

I find it interesting that the WoW-side of this song sounds like a 14 year old “Herp Derper” while the SWTOR player sounds like a normal human being. (Naw… I am not biased, why do you ask?)

However, I can tell you a few things.

1) If you don’t have this game pre-ordered already, go ahead and get it.

2) No, seriously… Go ahead and get it.  You won’t be sorry.

Some things I can comment on…

1) There seems to be a lot of “WoW-Rage” in every new game.  SW:TOR is no exception.

2) I would expect WoW to drop 4.3 very soon in order to try and steal SW:TOR’s Launch-Day Thunder.  I don’t know that it will work.  While WoW is adding “Yet Another Endgame Encounter”, SW:TOR will be shiny and new.  I have heard reports that SW:TOR has already sold over 2 million pre-orders.  If that is true, I’d be willing to wager that a new raid in WoW isn’t going to keep their attention very long, if at all. (and that’s assuming that all of the 2 million pre-orders are WoW players… Something I know is NOT true.)

3)  I said this in an Ask Massively column a long time ago, WoW ain’t going anywhere.  However, with a loss of over a million subscribers so far this year, and with new games taking bigger and bigger bites of WoW’s subscriber base.  I don’t think it is unreasonable to say that WoW is starting to move, inexorably, back to the pack.  I would not be shocked to see WoW dip below 10 million subscribers by the end of this year, and I think SW:TOR will get more than a few of those people. If SW:TOR takes off, there is no reason it couldn’t pass WoW in subscriber numbers within another couple of years.  Will it hit 12 million like WoW did?  I REALLY doubt it.  On the other hand, as franchises go, show me a bigger money maker, historically,  than Star Wars.

Here’s the real kicker.  What things does an MMO need in order to maintain success?

1) Community.  I’m not sure how well the in-game community is going to develop, but I’m sure that it’s going to.  There are a lot of hardcore Star Wars fans out there.

2) Pop-culture tie-ins.  Perhaps not mentioned much, but part of WoW’s success is tied to some of the merchandising and other multimedia tie ins.  T-shirts, novels, even rumors of a World of Warcraft movie.  Star Wars comes with all of that stuff built in.  Non-gamers might not know who Thrall is, but you can bet your ass they know names like Skywalker or Vader.

3) Quality of the game.  Yeah, it still matters.   Without giving anything away, I will say that my experience was very smooth over the weekend.  Not a lot of bugs (and the ones I did find weren’t game breakers), and the game felt as if it were ready to be released very soon.  We all knew Bioware had a good track record with single player RPGs in the Star Wars universe.  While I think they have made a couple of “rookie mistakes” in the MMO space, they have learned a lot of good lessons from previous games including WoW, Rift, and others.

Assuming that this game doesn’t completely crap the bed on launch, I’d like to go ahead and invite the entire 501st to the MMO track party at Dragon*Con next year.

Now look.  I have been as guilty as anyone of throwing around some faux-Alliance hatred at Dragon*Con… But seriously?  You’re going to do THIS at Blizzcon and not expect to catch shit for it?  The folks at GLAAD, and GayGamer.net, and pretty much anyone else who understands that World of Warcraft is just a fucking game responded about like you would expect.  However, now there are other stories popping out about fans being assaulted at Blizzcon for wearing Alliance gear.

Seriously?

I mean… fucking-yay that Blizzard has officially apologized.  But still…

So here’s the deal.  No more “Roll Call” at Dragon*Con for the Horde and Alliance.  I’m not even willing to play into the whole Alliance vs Horde thing anymore.  For me, it was a lot of fun, but I draw the line at hearing about people being assaulted for wearing an Alliance t-shirt.  I draw the line at dealing with people who have no sense of context and who assault people for a purely manufactured reason.  It’s just a damned game, people.

There is a slightly darker corner of my psyche that wants to buy an Alliance t-shirt, show up to Blizzcon next year, and dare Corpsegrinder, Samwise, or anyone else to say something about it.

Just when I thought I got out… Looks promising. Of course it is Day 1 of Blizzcon, so OF COURSE IT LOOKS PROMISING!!! We shall see… Coming soon to an expansion near you. (And by “soon”, I mean… 2 years?)

Get ready for every hack MMO site on the ‘net to give “Sneak Previews” of features from the upcoming game.  Pay no attention to the fact that you could get 90% of this information directly from the SWTOR site.  Pay no attention to the fact that most of these articles will be written by columnists who can’t see past their own preconceptions.  Pay no attention to the hordes of angry fanbois who will scream “This game SUX” because they can’t play a “Wookiee Jedi with a quadruple-bladed lightsaber” (which, while awesome, might be just a little unreasonable…)  Most of you have already made the decision on whether or not you are going to try this game. (example: Me… I’ve already purchased my copy)

The way things are going in this industry, it is worth it to boycott or black-out all gaming “news” sites and go into a new game with your eyes and your mind open.  If you ever want to re-create the “WOW!” experience of your first MMO, then perhaps reading some blog’s “comprehensive class breakdown” columns months before the game hits the streets is a bad thing to do.  Half the fun of this genre is in exploring the game world and figuring things out for yourself.  If you walk into a game armed to the teeth with advice and tips from some “beta tester”, you may as well save your money and go rent a movie instead.  The blogger has already taken the best part of the gaming experience away from you.

The value of MMO-style beta testing is debatable, but it is definitely good for one thing.  Building Hype.

…and here it comes.

Put into perspective, this is “just another week” at Blizzard, but the difference is that in this case, it wasn’t directly or indirectly the player’s fault that their accounts were hacked.  Kudos to the SOE team for getting on top of this so quickly, but if you guys are looking for a real Information Security pro, I know a guy… =) (LinkedIn)

So yeah, it’s not an MMO, but it’s still a kickass game.  If you have been living under a rock and haven’t played Portal, you really need to give it a look.

It also gave us this.

If you’re looking for some folks to play with, Trevor and Grim are playing on the Alsbeth Server, Guardian side.  Just look for Grimthorn or Daoseth.

Lochlin, Jay, Sheryl, Trevor, Ben, Jason, Ian.  (and those were just the guys who were playing as, or grouped with, Mooskulls for the evening.)

Thank you to Jenn and Ben for your very generous donations on-site. (and especially to Jenn for levelling her own character, on her own, for the full duration.  Even though she played an Alliance character, that girl has some serious stamina. (vis-a-vis most of Team Grim taking power naps at certain points during the night))

We got Mooskulls to level 30 which is a nice round number and makes it easy to figure out how much our pledgers will be sending us… especially when us old guys are in a serious sleep deficit.

To give you guys an idea how much even dollar counts…

• 50 dollars = Co-Pay for a doctor’s visit. (which he has to do monthly from now on)
• 500 bucks = A PET scan, which Jay will require 3 times/year for the rest of his life.

That money is what insurance does not cover.  Politics aside, having health insurance is no guarantee that medical bills won’t put a severe hurting on a person’s finances.  Every dollar that came in last night will make a profound difference to Jay and his family.

Between the donations that we have received so far and what we did last night, we’ve managed to cover most of Jay’s medical payments for the next year.  “Thanks” doesn’t even begin to cover it, but thank you to everyone who came out to show their support, or were with us in spirit.

Thanks!

Team Grim

http://fireflyuniverseonline.com/

Here’s a quick preview video to give you an idea what Curt Schilling, R.A. Salvatore, and Todd McFarlane are up to.

This week we touch on a series of MMO highlights and news stories from both GDC and PAX East. I don’t want to give too much away, but I’ve added some links and videos behind the break for those who want more information on the games we’re talking about this week!

SW:TOR Trailer:

The Secret World GDC writeup & trailer:

UFO Online: Fight for Earth:

Grimlands:

You can check out all this news and more over on Massively!

Music used:

• Opening: “Yellow Cake (Healflouride) by Ministry
• Bed: Tavern music from WoW (sampled and looped)
• Ending: “Я очень рад, ведь я, наконец, возвращаюсь домой” by Eduard Khil

Questions? Comments? Hatemail? Contact us at podcast [AT] dc [DASH] mmo [DOT] org or catch up with Krystalle & Kevin on Twitter

While recording a new SnarkCast with Krystalle, yesterday, we were discussing various bits of MMO news from all over the world.  Sure, there are lots of games going into beta… and lots of games that have just been announced… and lots of games which have announced that they’ll be free to play… but there is a huge “800 pound gorilla” in the room.

Cataclysm is almost here.

I’m going to be honest with all of you.  It is going to be very easy to find me next week, but unless you’re in-game, it’s going to be damned near impossible to get my attention.  I’ve already got my copy of the expansion, a metric ton of coffee, and vacation scheduled for next week.

Heck, I’ve already got my Goblin mount because I’ve already farmed my Bilgewater Cartel faction to Exalted.

Some folks might be wondering if Cataclysm is “all that”.   As someone who spent several months in the beta, let me assure you.  It’s worth it.  I avoided dungeons and end-game raids in the beta because I wanted to go in with at least something to surprise me, but the 80-85 level zones are very cool, and the re-worked world of Azeroth is fun to explore.  I’m sure some of the number crunchers and theorycrafters are going to have “head asplodey” moments with all of the changes, but most players will spend the first few months of the expansion flying around the world and saying “Oooh, SHINY!” a lot.

Here is a sneak preview for you to enjoy.

I know this is a shock to most of you, but I went ahead and pre-ordered Cataclysm today.  For those of you who are considering doing the same, I’d suggest getting the digital download from Blizzard.  You can download the Cataclysm data files now, and be ready to go live the second the switch is flipped on December 7. (You know… after 24 hours of patching and emergency bug fixes.)

The good news is.  If you’re looking for me between December 7 and December 12, I will be very easy to find.  The bad news is, if you send an email, I probably won’t see it.  If you call, you will only hear grunting… and maybe the occasional “MORE HOT POCKETS!“

With the recent 4.0.1 patch to World of Warcraft yesterday, a lot of the new functionality for spells and talents has been implemented.  You can throw a rock and hit a website with commentary on the changes, but suffice to say that if you haven’t updated your addons in a while, you’re going to be in for a rude awakening when you next log in.

Be prepared for:

• Your talents are all reset
• None of your addons will work correctly
• Your spells don’t do what they did before.
• Stat changes are in place (no more spell hit or defense, etc)
• Your gems are all different (and will almost certainly need to be replaced)

Between Reforging and Re-Gemming my items, I spent around 4k gold last night. (In fairness, I did a bit of theorycrafting)  You’ve been warned.

December 7th, 2010.  A day which will live in infamy as geeks all over the world come down with the same mysterious illness.  World of  Warcraft junkies of the world, get your Christmas shopping done early.  Rumor has it that the game will be available for digital download as well as in the more traditional box format.  Regular edition will cost 39.99, and the Collector’s Edition will run 79.99.

I’ll post something official later in the week when I’ve had a chance to, I don’t know, sleep and maybe eat something that wasn’t made under a heat lamp. I just thought you’d all like to get a head start on downloading the client.

However, something happened today that got my attention.  I am more excited about this change in World of Warcraft than I’ve been about any change in any video game ever.  Considering that I’ve been a gamer for nearly 30 years, that is no mean statement.

The first and most significant change is that in the near future, anyone posting or replying to a post on official Blizzard forums will be doing so using their Real ID — that is, their real-life first and last name — with the option to also display the name of their primary in-game character alongside it. These changes will go into effect on all StarCraft II forums with the launch of the new community site prior to the July 27 release of the game, with the World of Warcraft site and forums following suit near the launch of Cataclysm. Certain classic forums, including the classic Battle.net forums, will remain unchanged.

You can read the rest of the statement here.

Blizzard is making a ballsy move, and one that has been LONG overdue in online discussion forums.  You know as well as I do that Internet forums are a haven for trolls and other jacknuts who hide behind the anonymity that the Internet provides in order to act like 10-year-old asshats.  It’s darn near impossible for most forums to enforce any kind of meaningful identity check because it’s easy to lie about who you are and not get caught.  In theory, this is highly desirable because there are some fields of discussion where anonymity promotes freedom of expression.

World of Warcraft is a different beast.  Free speech rights are not an issue.  This is a close community of paying customers who interact with developers and other players in order to gain insight and information about the game they are paying for.  Why do you need anonymity for that?  You don’t.    Blizzard, the only party in this situation with any meaningful power whatsoever, already knows who you are.  They have the ability to link character names to account information, and all parties in the discussion are aware of this.   Now they are choosing to remove the cloak of anonymity in order to foster intelligent and more mature discussion, and I say BRAVO!

To be sure, there is much wailing and gnashing of teeth from those who want to continue to troll and act like jerks while hiding behind an anonymous facade.  In fact, if you will notice some of the complaints in the thread mentioned above, you’ll see some familiar guild tags to anyone who has any familiarity with online griefing and trolling. (<Goons> anyone?)

To those folks, let me propose an idea which might make everyone happier.  Leave the official forums alone.  Don’t post there anymore.  Start your own “Free for all” forums for World of Warcraft fans who want to engage in the kind of behavior that will be curbed by the lack of anonymity on the Blizzard forums.

This issue has been a pet peeve of mine for many years now.  As some of you may know, I’ve run an EverQuest online community for 8 years now.  While I allow users to select whatever name they like for posting on the forums, I verify contact information for every user who registers.  If someone logs in and starts making my forums an un-fun place to visit, I want to know who to go after in order to make them stop.  It’s not flawless, and I’ve had to play whack-a-mole with trolls, retards, and asshats on occasion, but for the most part users knowing that I know who they are cuts down on the jerk factor considerably.

Invariably, the issue that your garden-variety asshat brings up is “It’s a free country.  I have the right to speak my mind”.  Not on my forums, you don’t, and not on Blizzard’s either.  Rather than waste Blizzard’s time in tracking down and smacking down every jerk who wants to use his Internet connection as some kind of cathartic release at the expense of their fellow players, Blizzard has re-introduced the concept of community accountability.   If you want to be a jerk online then do what I did and start your own podcast/forum/blog.  You don’t have the right to trample someone else’s online garden.

I can’t help but notice how many elements of this game closely resemble a certain game we all know and love.  The thing is… Warhammer was first.  The question is, can they make the material engaging enough and make the gameplay fun enough to give folks something new?

I hope Vigil does a better job than EA/Mythic did…

I’m not sure when this one is coming, but I am very pleased to see a trailer for it…

First, the “Before”

and, nearly 4 weeks of attempts later… The “After”

What does this mean for you guys?  It means you won’t hear me bitching about this fight anymore on The SnarkCast!

Portal, arguably the best non-MMO game ever created, is now FREE! (At least, it’s free until May 24th)

You must get this game.  You must play this game.  The cake is a lie!

Fear not, my fellow geeks.  WoW.com is on the case.  They have announcements and analysis for all of the upcoming class changes and it looks like every class is getting a taste.  The only class that hasn’t been announced yet is Paladins, but I think we can all agree that next to Warlocks, they are the class in most dire need of a severe nerfing.

Of course, we, the fearless staff of DC*MMO, are happy to do our part to repress, supress, and distress the Warlocks among us.  We even had a “Live-action Warlock Nerfing” at Dragon*Con a couple of years back…

MOAR DOTZ!

-Grim

The box looks like it'll stand up to a Zerg rush...

It’s a rare day when $99.99 doesn’t seem like a stupid amount of money to pay for a video game. Steel Battalion, with it’s “you’re going to need a bigger boat lap” controller was one of the earliest titles to hit the century mark. Blizzard seems to have found a way to justify separating us from a C-note with the Collector’s Edition of StarCraft II, even though there’s no release date set yet. For those of you who haven’t seen the trailer yet, Dani posted about it here.

In addition to the sequel of the wildly-popular original, a Duke Nukem-esque ten years in development, there are a whole passel of goodies tucked into that big honking box:

• THE ART OF STARCRAFT II: WINGS OF LIBERTY – 176 pages of concepts and 3d renderings

• JIM RAYNOR “DOG TAG” USB DRIVE – Replica of Jim Raynor’s in-game dog tag is a 2GB USB thumb drive, pre-loaded with the original StarCraft and Brood War Expansion

• BEHIND THE SCENES DVD – Dev interviews, all the cut-scene animations (with director commentary), and discussion of the original SC’s place in gaming lore

• STARCRAFT COMIC ISSUE #0

• GAME SOUNDTRACK – 14 tracks from the game itself, plus a couple of bonus tunes. I’m a sucker for game soundtracks – they make the daily commute suck less, that’s for sure.

• WORLD OF WARCRAFT IN-GAME PET – Maybe you’ll want Baby Thor as a companion to your shenanigans in Azeroth

Who is Near Death Studios?

NDS is a studio owned and run by Brian “Psychochild” Green, who has been a panelist and speaker at Dragon*Con in previous years.  Psychochild has been the target of a few good-natured ribs concerning the now-infamous “Meridian 59 panel” .   The shutting-down of NDS is a little sad for me personally.

What’s the story?

Well, back in the early days of what has now become DC*MMO, Trevor, Waylon Adams, and I had a panel on online gaming.  Now considering that Everquest was the big boy on the block, and World of Warcraft was just a gleam in Blizzard’s eye, you can imagine that things were a bit more intimate than they are today.  So when we put together a panel on the industry as a whole, we were ready to do just about anything to keep it from turning into something like

“Well, in Everquest…”

“In Everquest, we do…”

“How does Everquest handle the issue of…”

You get the idea.

We decided to bring in a couple of panelists who had nothing to do with Everquest.  That’s how I met Elonka Dunin (who, for my money, is the smartest woman on the planet).  I also got to meet a pleasant chap named Nathan who worked on a game called “Wish“, and then there was Brian.

Brian joined us on the dais, grabbed a microphone, and if we hadn’t cut off power to the room, might STILL be talking.

“In Meridian 59…”

“In my game, Meridian 59…”

“Well in Merdian 59, we…”

We had avoided becoming an EQ panel, but had somehow turned it into a panel on Meridian 59.  Poor Nathan couldn’t get a word in edge-wise, and I don’t think Elonka got to answer more than one question.  My friends, who took time out of their con schedule to watch me try and play moderator, ribbed me the rest of the weekend.  “Meridian 59… Meridian 59… Meridian 59!!!”  In fact, this panel has a great deal to do with how I have since developed my moderating style. (I am no longer shy about interrupting folks if they start rambling or if I feel they are starting to dominate a discussion.  Either you run the panel, or the panel runs over you.)

As initially annoying as it was at the time, and as much fun as I’ve made of Meridian 59 in the intervening years, Brian Green taught me an extremely important lesson about MMO development, and life in general.  Brian’s passion for his game, and his belief in what he was doing shone through every word he said.   He is a “true believer” in M59, and he wanted to get the word out to anyone who would listen.

We should all be so passionate about the things we do for a living.  Having a job that you love that much is worth more than money, and game developers, at least the good ones, are “true believers” in the games they create.  The game developers who come to Dragon*Con pay their own way, and take their own vacation time to come to our convention.  They truly believe in what they have created and they want to come to our convention to get their message out to the rest of us.  The MMO industry will lose something vital when the “bottom line” becomes more important than the game itself.

Brian “Psychochild” Green had a lot to do with teaching me that.  I’m sorry that his company has shut down, but I hope that Meridian 59 is around for a long time.

In preparation for our next SnarkCast and because Krystalle can be, at times, a moderating influence on me, I have prepared a Christmas “Naughty or Nice?” list of stories, people, and things that have happened in the past year. Don’t expect anything even remotely “correct” or “political”.

Nice
World of Warcraft’s 3.3 patch
The new content is nice, but the LFG tool has made dungeon groups fun again. I don’t think I’ve seen a wait time longer than 10 minutes for a dungeon. I love to bag on WoW on the SnarkCast, but I must give credit where it is due. 3.3 has me playing again… a lot.

Fallen Earth

The folks at Fallen Earth have come up with a rather nifty game set in a Post Apocalyptic American Southwest. (Grand Canyon, to be specific)  If you’re in the mood to check out a game that departs from the average fantasy-based WoW clone, I highly recommend this one.  It’s from a small, independent studio so there are some warts in the game, but the community is tight-knit and the in-game customer service staff is responsive.  Enjoy.

Sony Online Entertainment

SOE has a lot going on.  There is a new EQ expansion out there (16!!!), more EQII content on the way, and Free Realms has gotten off to a very good start.  That, and Brenlo and the gang are lots of fun to hang out with at Dragon*Con.

Ok, enough of the syrupy sweet, here comes the “coal in the stocking”…

Naughty
Aion

A craptacular grindfest which is packaged in eye candy is still a craptacular grindfest.  The fact that NCSoft, a studio which seems all-too-eager to pull the plug on MMO’s that don’t make enough money for them, is behind it leads me to believe that this title won’t have much staying power. (Tabula Rasa, anyone?)

MMO’s which are basically LAN-party sized games with a giant chat lobby.

Ok, so it isn’t Guild Wars’ fault that so many new games are adopting this approach, but for the love of Curt Schilling, can we stop calling games that are chat lobbies for 5-10 player “dungeons” MMORPGs?  Raiding Temple of Veeshan with 300 players is Massive.  Raiding Molten Core with 40 players is Massive.   Sitting in a chat lobby until you can mash together a 5 man group in order to run a dungeon is NOT Massive.  If you can’t get out of the quest hub and explore the world, it’s not an MMO.  If “the world” is instanced to the point that you have zero chance of randomly encountering another player in it, it is not an MMO.  It can still be a great game, but call it something else.

Champions Online

Ok, so I was super stoked about buying this game.  So much so that I got the 6 month subscription (thus guaranteeing me a place in the Star Trek Online beta, which I am currently enjoying)  I played it for about a week, then realized… Grind-tacular snorefest.  The comic book style graphics are interesting and the game has a world of promise, but do us all a favor.  Reduce the level cap by half and cram what content you have into those levels.  Gaps in content make levelling an endless chore.  If I wanted that, I’d have stayed in Everquest.  I hope Star Trek Online is listening…

As always, this is just my opinion.   I can’t help it that I’m right.

Merry Christmas!

-Grim

P.S. as an added bonus, and because I’ve mentioned her in just about every SnarkCast we’ve done, here’s a Christmas pic of Samantha.

reposted in its entirety below:

Please be warned that today somebody swamped the internet with an extremely well made phishing mail, which looks very much like a genuine mail from Blizzard, and promises you a Jade Tiger in-game pet if you just fill out a survey. Of course to do so you’ll have to type your Battle.net login and password on the fake website us.blizzard-survey.com. And the next time you log in after that, instead of finding a Jade Tiger, you’ll find your characters naked and all your gold and possessions gone.

Braving the dark corners of the internet I gave a fake userid and password to the phishing website, which led me to the survey (note that if the website wasn’t fake, I wouldn’t have been able to “log on” with the fake userid). I was surprised how extremely professional this phishing side was, it looked exactly like a Blizzard site, even the survey looked real, and after thanking you for participation you get forwarded to the real World of Warcraft site. Scary stuff, this.

Now excuse me while I run a virus check on my computer.

A couple of notes:

1. Authenticators are a REALLY good idea.  Perhaps not for every game, but a game that is as popular as WoW is is bound to attract the kind of scumbags who do this sort of thing.
2. blizzard-survey.com… Ouch.  Even if someone was sharp enough to look up the domain information, here is what they would find.

WHOIS information for blizzard-survey.com :

[Querying whois.internic.net]
[Redirected to whois.ename.com]
[Querying whois.ename.com]
[whois.ename.com]
Domain Name : blizzard-survey.com

Registrant Contact Information :
AdminDomain
Blizzard Entertainment
jackis@mailinator.com
US, 18979
tel:
fax:   

Administrative Contact Information :
AdminDomain
Blizzard Entertainment
jackis@mailinator.com
US, 18979
tel:
fax:   

Technical Contact Information :
AdminDomain
Blizzard Entertainment
jackis@mailinator.com
US, 18979
tel:
fax:   

Billing Contact Information :
AdminDomain
Blizzard Entertainment
jackis@mailinator.com
US, 18979
tel:
fax:   

Status :
clientDeleteProhibited
clientTransferProhibited

Domain Name Server :
ns1.2x4hosting.ru
ns2.2x4hosting.ru

Registration Date :2009-11-13
Expiration Date : 2010-11-13

Many folks who get this far would see “Blizzard Entertainment” and move on.  The only real indicators that this domain is a phishing domain are

1. Registered last week.
2. Name Servers are in Russia. (and let’s face it, the Russkies are behind 99% of the high quality Internet scams out there, trust me… I know.)

Bottom line:  TANSTAAFL.  Why would Blizzard have a survey site and not advertise the hell out of it on worldofwarcraft.com or in-game?  If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.  Be careful out there.

Ye can find more information at http://www.telltalegames.com/playlikeapirate.

Don’t say we ne’er did anythin’ fer ye, neither. 

The highlights:

• New Expansion coming, called Cataclysm
• New races for Horde (Goblin) and Alliance (Worgen)
• Level Cap raised to 85
• Skill caps raised another 75 points
• Lots of new zones in Azeroth, and mega changes to existing zones. (example, The Barrens will now be two zones)
• Goblin Racial: Rocket Jump  / +1% to casting/attack speed / 15 to Alchemy / Personal Hobgoblin servant
• Worgen Racial: Don’t need a skinning knife to get leather / Sprint / Worgen Form / Reduced duration diseases and curses
• Goblin Classes: All but Paladin and Druid
• Worgen Classes: All but Shaman and Paladin
• Following Item Stats are gone:  MP5, Spellpower, Defense, Attack Power, Armor Penetration
• Major Changes to: Haste and Block
• Reforging allows crafters to change stats on gear
• Big changes to Fishing
• No more spell ranks.  Spell power increases as you level.
• Warlock shards no longer stored in bags
• New race/class combos… Say hi to the Dwarf Mage (back from Beta!)

There are some more bits of information here, but don’t take my word for it… See for yourself.

Oh, and they unveiled the Monk class for Diablo 3, but this is an MMO site, and I’m sure none of you are interested in that.

Thus, we opted to reimagine the entire podcast, and have rebranded it SnarkCast. In this, our official first edition of SnarkCast, we discuss D*C MMO bidness, sure – but we also wander across the landscape from MMO drama to just what the heck is wrong with FreeRealms. Add in a healthy dose of Hentai, and you have the first-ever SnarkCast.

Admittedly, the engineering on this one is a bit rough, but we’re still working that out. As always feedback, suggestions, or gifts of chocolate-covered espresso beans are welcome!

EPISODE #1, VOLUME #1

**SHOW NOTES**

Topics listed here are meant as resources for further reading, but are by no means the entirety of topics covered. If you have any questions on sources, feel free to leave a comment and ask!

• Richard Garriott sues NCsoft
• Trion to reveal MMOs at E3
• Darkfall drama llama
• Free Realms!
• Stargate Worlds studio head heads for Gazillion
• Ace of Cakes Squig Herder cake

Music used in this podcast:

• Intro: “Isis Unveiled” by …And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of Dead, courtesy of the Podsafe Music Network
• Bed music: “Suco de Melancia (Costa del Sol)” by Red Tailed Fox, courtesy of the FFVII Voices of the Lifestream OverClocked Remix project
• Featured bed snarky musical blurb – Super Mario Theme (Rock remix) by psobot
• Outro: “Lunatic Moon (Red XIII’s Theme ~ Cosmo Canyon)” by Sixto Sounds & zircon,  courtesy of the FFVII Voices of the Lifestream OverClocked Remix project

Comments? Questions? Hatemail? Email podcast [at] dc-mmo [dot] org, or ping Grim & netgoth on twitter

If there are any games you would like me to try under Windows 7, let me know and I’ll see what I can do.

Current games:

• World of Warcraft
• City of Heroes
• EVE Online
• Runes of Magic
• Warhammer Online
• Age of Conan
  
• Command & Conquer – Red Alert 3

I know there’s a lot of spandex loving Dragon*Con attendees out there who are eagerly anticipating this one (at least, if their panels last year were any indicator), and I have to admit that the recent announcement of the “swinging” travel power has me itching to put the tights on again myself.

Hey, what can I say?  I have an affinity for a certain web-slinger.

With Dragon*Con happening just over a month after the release we’re really hoping that Cryptic decides to join us again this year and give us the insider scoop to their new MMO hotness!

Now you may be wondering why I’d be bringing him up in a post on the Dragon*Con MMORPG track site.  Or you may be wondering what you’re going to have for lunch.  I don’t know.  I’m not you.

Anyway, where was I?  Oh, yeah.  Right.  Anthony Daniels.  Star Wars. Ok.  A good number of you that have come to our panels in the past are fans of Sony’s Star Wars Galaxies, and we’ve also heard a lot of buzz about the upcoming Star Wars : The Old Republic from Bioware.  A lot of Star Wars fans like to joke that C-3PO is the “gay robot” from the Star Wars mythos (although in the interest of full disclosure I understand Mr. Daniels has gotten quite friendly with some of the ladies in the Dawn lookalike contest in the past, so the actor himself likely isn’t gay…just British).

How does all of this tie together?  Well, according to at least one community moderator over on the Bioware site not only was C-3PO a confirmed homosexual but the terms “homosexual,” “lesbian,” and “gay” are “terms that do not exist in Star Wars.”

Somebody needs to tell Voltaire this.  Stat.

In all fairness to Bioware they reversed their position on this yesterday by re-opening threads with titles like “GBLT Discrimination in Forums?”  Not only that, but one poster on their forums made the very valid case that, at least in the Star Wars gaming universe, there is already an established incident of at least one homosexual character (Juhani from the original Knights of the Old Republic).   It appears, at least at this point, that Bioware isn’t going to have a hard line stance against references to homosexuality in their upcoming game.

This situation opens up a larger question for me, personally, though.  Is it really necessary for sexual preference to be an issue when you’re playing an MMORPG?

I jump around to so many different stances on this particular issue I make myself dizzy.  From a Role-Playing perspective I think it’s perfectly valid that a character in an MMORPG could be a homosexual, and I think that a person who chooses to play a character in that manner should be allowed to do so.  I also, however, have a real problem with the fact that, in a game not marketed as adults-only, sexuality comes into play at all.

This fact alone has kept me off of Role-Playing servers in games like World of Warcraft.  I’ve been a role-player since I was 12 years old, but if I walk into an inn in Goldshire I want to encounter other young adventurers – not naked night elves giving lap dances to dwarves.  I’ve encountered the same thing on several occasions in City of Heroes, and it always bothers me whenever it happens.  I understand that people might want to get their virtual freak on, but in an environment where putting on your robe and wizard hat might happen in front of a 13 year old kid (or, even worse, WITH a 13 year old kid) I just don’t think it’s appropriate.

I sure hope saying that does not make me a prude (and considering some of the stuff I’ve done at previous cons I’d hate to see what a pervert did if I was), but as a parent it’s always something that has been a concern of mine.  The whole topic of sex and sexuality is a touchy one, but as a parent my first inclination is to say that unless it’s being marketed to adults it really not one that belongs in our video games.

Stay tuned, we have a LOT of stuff coming your way.

-Grim

Call me crazy.