China Bans Gold Farmers – Time For Care

Or perhaps another, but much longer, title to this post could have been But Nothing Ever Happens In The Way You Expect…

My first reaction to the news that the Chinese government has banned gold farming was that it was a huge step in the right direction. It won’t shut down the gold selling industry, but it will hurt this particular group of sociopaths who engage in shady and downright criminal behaviour at the expense of a whole range of other people.

That’s a big woo hoo right there.

But gold farmers have shown that they’re not above criminal practices to make their gold. Expect to see a big rise in the number of account hacks and keylogger malware as these people desperately try to recoup their losses.

It’s probably a …

Slouching Towards The Nanny-State

With apologies to Yeats.

It’s been a bad news day today hasn’t it?

There appears to be more to come for us Aussies. Nestled among the stories about Michael Jackson and Farrah Fawcet — my sympathies to their loved ones — is another about the Internet filter that our so-called democratic government wants to foist upon us.

It looks like that they want to protect us now, aside from child pornography, from racy and unrated downloadable games that we can get from the internet. And since Australia does not have a 18+ rating for games, that means many of the unrated games that we can now get from overseas will be filtered.

A lot of gamers possibly won’t find this an inconvenience. …

Jacobs Out, Mythic & Bioware To Merge – No Surprise Really

The MMORPG blogosphere is buzzing today. It’s been announced that not only is Mark Jacobs leaving EA-Mythic as of today, Mythic will also be merged with Bioware with the current Bioware heads (and founders) heading up the new structure with the Mythic business remaining intact but reporting to Ray Muzyka and Greg Zeschuk.

A few bloggers have expressed surprise at the announcment, with only Heartless_ saying I told you so and reminding us of the toxic effect that EA has on the game developers that it buys.

Me. I’m not so surprised really. On both counts.

Jacobs …

Dungeons and Dragons Online – Another Choice

Due to my recently required spendthriftiness I’ve found myself taking more notice when I see news of an upcoming free to play MMORPG pop up on the web. Even though the term, Free To Play, isn’t really true since most of these games strongly encourage the use of RMT to progress, there are substantial cost savings for someone like me who tends to switch games regularly. Instead of dropping $15 a month, every month, if there’s a need to pay to progress it’s a one off cost per character.

So the announcement that Dungeons and Dragons Online is going to a free to play model in the near the future certainly sparks my interest. I did subscribe a while back, but only for a couple of …

Terminator The MMORPG

I was just looking at Graev’s review of the Terminator Salvation (movie tie-in) game. I guess it’s no surprise but Graev reports it as being a pretty mediocre game. That seems to be the fate of most movie tie-ins (anyone remember the ET game? There’s supposedly a mythical landfill comprised entirely of the cartridges of this game.) And the Matrix Online was a subpar attempt to capitalise on the Matrix franchise, soon to join the MMO Deadpool.

About the only movie tie-in that I’ve played that was anygood was the Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay. Maybe that’s because Vin Diesel is a gamer, and involved in making games.

But anyway, here’s a thought. The post-apocalptic setting of the Terminator …

Has Anyone Proven The Violent Game Link Yet?

Has anyone proven that there is really a link between violent games and real-world violent or antisocial behaviour?

Over at Game Politics there is a post about the most recent study that supposedly proves this link. The article talks about how a researcher from a Texan university is disputing the results due to the use of poor research methods.

And this is the crux of the matter. It seems every one of these studies (that I’ve read about) has used methods that either bear no relationship to the way things work in the real world, or are designed to achieve a desired result. This latest study seems to do the former, but there are many …

Everquest 2, Adventure, Advancement, Sages and WoW Status

After dipping my toes back into the world of Neo-Norrath (that’s Everquest 2) and playing a few different classes, I ended up rolling on a Templar on Lucan D’Lere and joining up with a great guild there. That happened middle of last week.

The Halasian Empire is a long established guild, and has the added advantage of having a few Aussie members. It’s nice to be able to be online with a folks from my own timezone. It’s also includes a few blogger friends, some of whom I met in the Casualties of War.

Of course, none of the characters I’d previously rolled were on LDL, so a new class was necessary, and having not played a healer for a long long time (barring a stint as …

Welcome Back Brad

Just saw a post about the return of Brad McQuaid to game development over at the Common Sense Gamer. Darren is linking to a new blog by the veteran designer that has a couple of posts up talking about Vanguard and his re-emerging desire to get back into the world of MMORPG design.

In the post titled, Where the heck have you been? McQuaid briefly recounts the last couple of years since he departed the Vanguard team. In the final paragraph he says:

But in the last few months I’ve really felt that desire to be back in the industry and creating games.  I’ve been putting feelers out and weighing my options.  Part

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