Rezzing the Incredible Gaming Fest

It’s the end of the year. Woo hoo!

I hope you have all had a good Christmas and have received some nice phat loot. Santa definitely has some good drops.

I’ve had quite a busy week. In addition to the Christmas day relly-go-round, this year saw the resurrection of the incredible gaming fest. About ten or eleven years ago I and a few friends got our computers together and had a LAN party. Since then, every Christmas week we repeat the tradition. For three days my living room accomodates a number of blokes playing a variety of games. We have even built our own gaming table. It’s a big round table about three meters in diameter and comfortably fits six players and their PCs.

The last time we did the incredible gaming fest was in 2002. 2003 saw me heading to the US for work. I was there for two and a half years, living in Baltimore, Maryland. I came back to Australia late 2005, but I wasn’t able to get anything organised that year.

We ended up playing Battlefield 2 for most of the time. I hadn’t really played it much before so I was pretty much on the lower end of the rankings, and my attempts to fly the jets and helicopters resulted in much amusement. We also played a bit of C&C Generals, though the consensus was that BF2 was more fun.

All in all, it was a great deal of fun. It’s always good to get together with your friends, even more so when you get to inflict mongrel acts on each other. That is always a good time.

I hope you all have a good New Years, and I hope the New Year brings you closer to your hopes and dreams. If you’re out partying, have fun, and take care on the way home.

Cheers, everyone.

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Major Warcraft Bannage - 105,000 Accounts Closed

Also from the forums comes the news that Blizzard has banned more than 105,000 accounts during November in their on-going efforts to prevent cheating and gold selling. The announcement on the World of Warcraft General forum follows:

In our continued efforts to combat cheating in
World of Warcraft, more than 105,000 accounts were closed and over 12
million gold was removed from the game economies in Europe, Korea, and
the US in the month of November. The closed accounts were associated
with activities that violate World of Warcraft’s Terms of Use, such as
using third-party programs that allow cheating, and farming gold and
items. These types of activities can severely impact the economy of a
realm and the overall game enjoyment for all players.

We will continue to aggressively monitor all World of Warcraft
realms in order to protect the service and its players from the harmful
effects of cheating. Please note that selling World of Warcraft
content, such as gold, items, and characters, can result in a permanent
ban of the involved accounts from World of Warcraft.

Many account closures come as the direct result of tips reported to our GMs in game or emailed to our Hacks Team <http://www.blizzard.com/support/?id=eHacks000>
by legitimate World of Warcraft players. If you suspect that a World of
Warcraft player is using an illegal third-party program to farm gold or
items, or is otherwise violating our Terms of Use, please report the
suspected infraction via one of the means listed above. All reports
will be investigated, and those that prove false will not result in
corrective action.

As always, thank you for your continued support, and best of luck with your continued adventures in Azeroth!

It’s good to see that Blizzard take cheating in the World of Warcraft seriously. In a single player game, it really hurts no-one but the player if they use a hack, crack, or cheat code. MMOs, however, are a different sort of beast. Cheating, Gold Farming/Selling, and even just violating the terms of service, have a effect on other players.

If gold, for example, is bought from a gold seller, the buyer will generally be prepared to pay larger amounts for some items. This then inflates the price of those items beyond what other, honest, players can easily afford. Since Blizzard has removed over 12 million gold this round, prices can return to more reasonable amounts. Yay!

However, there have also been some reports that legitimate players with large gold balances have also been banned. A couple of these players have been reported to be players that are operating as guild banks with nearly 20,000 gold.

It looks like Blizzard is using an algorithm that checks for extraordinary bank balances, 20k gold is pretty extraordinary, and are automatically flagging these accounts for a ban. It seems they are then relying on players complaining in order to reinstate legit accounts.

Of course, the reports that are being made, may not be genuine. The forums are not known for honesty or fair commentary. Having said that, it does still seem prudent of Blizzard to make sure they aren’t banning genuine players. It’s not a good way to treat your customers.

If you have been banned, and are a legitimate player, your best course of action is to contact Blizzards Customer Support at: http://www.blizzard.com/support/wowaa/

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The End of the Weekly Maintenance?

An announcement on the World of Warcraft forums lends hope to all of us Antipodeans, Shift-Workers, and other Night Owls who are often deprived of a large chunk of playing time during the week. Unfortunately, the WoW weekly maintenance falls during Tuesday night primetime for us Oceanic players. But this may soon change…

Since the game’s release, one of our most important
service goals has been to reduce the amount of time realms are down for
weekly realm maintenance. The various hardware upgrades and retrofits
we’ve done over the past year have put us in a position to begin
testing the ability to go longer than a week between maintenance
periods.

In the upcoming weeks, we will be testing the effect of a live
maintenance, where regular maintenance tasks are run during off-peak
with realms live. On Tuesday, December 26 there will be no scheduled
downtime for weekly maintenance. We will perform all necessary
maintenance tasks while the realms are live. We are anticipating the
possibility that we may need to perform rolling restarts off-peak if we
find that a realm restart is necessary; however the downtime for each
realm would be less than 10 minutes if it was required.

It’s important to note that this is just a test. There is no certainty that Blizzard will be able to discontinue the weekly maintenance downtime completely. Even if they are not able to reach this goal, it looks very much like they will reduce the downtime significantly. In any case, it’s heartening to see that they have been working towards eliminating this weekly inconvenience.

Many thanks Blizzard.

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Yoiks and Away - Reflections and Directions

Darren Rowse at Problogger is once again holding a writing competition for bloggers. His last competition, on How Tos, was held just after I started blogging, and I entered a post I wrote called Account Security. This time around, the topic is about Reviews and Predictions. It’s pretty timely. As I’ve been thinking about what to write on this subject, it occurred to me that I’ve also been thinking a lot lately about where I want to go with this blog and the web. It seems a perfect match up.

Reflections

This time last year, if you’d asked me what I’d have thought about blogging, I’d have said "not much." I honestly thought that blogging was one of those flash in the pan things. After all, who’d want to hear what I had to say.

About four months ago, for some reason that I have since forgotten, I visited a web site called Dexterity. The owner of that site, Steve Pavlina, who used to be an independent game developer had gone on to start a personal development business and blog. An article he had written that fateful day led me to consider what blogging was all about. That same article led me to the Problogger website.

I decided to try a little experiment. I would start my own blog. I would write about something I was passionate about, and I would see if I could earn money from it. From that inauspicious beginning, Stropp’s World was born and three months later, and a whole bunch of posts, I have earned almost ten dollars from it. Not much, but it’s a start, and better than I expected.

Yoiks and Away

Do you remember that Warner Brothers cartoon where Daffy Duck is Robin Hood?

I can remember splitting my sides laughing at the scene where Daffy grabs hold of a vine and with the cry "Yoiks and Away" swings off a branch straight into a tree. Then again with a weaker cry he swings straight into another tree, and so on. Even at 41 years of age that still cracks me up.

Well that’s where I feel I am right now. Standing on a branch with a vine in my hand. Do I leap off into the unknown? Or do I just climb down the tree and stay where I am?

Directions

One of the criteria I had when I first started Stropp’s World was based on a principle called the thirty day money back guarantee. This was based on the idea that most people never followed through on their intentions because they looked too big in the cold light of day.

The internal argument usually goes, "How can I start blogging, how can I keep this going for one, three, or five years? It’s just too much."

But. If I say I’ll try it for thirty days, at the end of that time I have the right to stop. No questions asked. That takes a lot of the pressure off attempting something. In my case, for Stropp’s World, I set a ninety day money back guarantee. If I felt at the end of that time, that I’d had enough. I’d just stop.

I’m at the ninety day mark now. I enjoy blogging with Stropp’s World, and I’ve done better than I expected. My first direction now, is that I will keep going with this blog.

Secondly, I’ve been feeling for a while that I’d like to do better with Stropp’s World. Part of that is to get more readers. Like other bloggers, I get a lot of google hits, but it doesn’t seem like I get a lot of regular readers. I’m going to need to do some research into that.

I’ve also mentioned before, that I am working on a web project with a friend. This is picking up steam, and I reckon will fit quite nicely with what I am doing with the blog. It will be a MMO related website application, and will initially work in with World of Warcraft, but will also work with other games. This is probably the bigger, scarier part of my direction. More details later, probably late January if things go well.

I’ve also got some plans for not only expanding this blog, but perhaps, possibly, starting one or two other blogs. These will more than likely be devoted to my other passions. One of which is software development. Yes, I’m a geek. Geek pride baby.

To Infinity and Beyond

2007 looks to be a good year for me. Filled with some risks, and hopefully the rewards from taking the risks. I’ll probably need a little courage to take the risk and step off that branch. I’m hoping there won’t be a tree on my way down.

Yoiks and Away!

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Impressive Up and Coming MMOs

A few days ago, I wrote that I had signed up for the beta of Lord of the Rings Online. At the end of that post I mentioned that there were a bunch of other impressive MMOs on the horizon. A reader commented, asking me what they are.

Here is my list of impressive up and coming MMOs.

Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures

Developer: Funcom Official Website
Release: Q2 2007

Age of Conan is set in the universe of Conan the Barbarian at the time in the novels where Conan has become king. This is going to be a very violent game with a MA rating. It is also the only game I’ve seen where the character creation allows you to configure the shape of your arse.

Tabula Rasa

Developer: NCSoft Official Website
Release: Unknown

Tabula Rasa is a Sci-Fi MMO being developed by Richard Garriot, the man behind the Ultima games including Ultima Online. This game plays more like a FPS, but has the character development of a RPG.

Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning

Developer: Mythic Entertainment Official Website
Release: 2007

Warhammer Online is being produced by the developers of the online game, Dark Age of Camelot, and is being set in the Warhammer universe. The graphics seem to be a little reminiscent of World of Warcrafts style, but the game as I understand it, will be substantially different.

Huxley

Developer: Webzen, Inc. (No Website)
Release: 2007

Another Sci-Fi MMO that has the leveling system of most MMORPGs, but from what I understand is more of a FPS action style. I saw some gameplay video a few months ago on the G4 TV site, and this game looks awesome. Unfortunately, as yet they don’t seem to have an official site for the game.

Star Trek Online

Developer: Perpetual Entertainment Official Website
Release: 2007?

Supposed to go to beta sometime in summer 2007. It will include starship combat as well as PvP and solo play. STO will deliver the essential experiences associated with Star Trek: shipboard and starbase life, away-team missions, holodeck activities, and encounters with other starships. And the best thing about this game is that I can be a Klingon. Scrape ‘em of Jim!

Stargate Worlds

Developer: Cheyenne Mountain Entertainment Official Website
Release: Unknown

One of my favorite TV series, so I really hope they do a good job. Stargate Worlds will let you play as a Human, Jaffa, Goa’uld, or Asgard. It looks like they will include the Atlantis worlds as well, which creates almost infinite possibilities for missions. I don’t really see a warrior class for the Asgard though.

Final Thoughts

Including LotRO, this makes seven big online games in development that will soon be released. There are a few other games out there that I haven’t mentioned that are imminent. Vanguard: Saga of Heroes is one that I’ve only recently heard about. Just about every other week I see a report of another MMORPG being announced. It seems every man and his dog is getting into the business. This is not to mention the latest announcements of MMORPGs set in the Firefly and Fallout universes which can also be considered reasonably hefty licences.

I was going to include more information on each of these games, but as I was writing this article, I became aware that I couldn’t do each of these games justice with a single paragraph. If anyone is interested, I’ll do more complete articles on each of these games in the coming weeks.

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Top 10 plus 1 Favorite WoW Blogs

A couple of months ago, Gitr posted about His Favorite WoW Blogs. I was pleasantly surprised to find myself in that list, especially considering that I had only been blogging for about six weeks at the time.

I was looking at my blog list today, and it occurred to me that I was reading a lot of World of Warcraft blogs everyday, as well as a number of blogs not related to WoW, or even related to games for that matter. So, in the spirit of sharing some of my favorite things in the season of sharing, here is my list of 10 + 1 WoW/MMORPG blogs.

1. Tobold’s MMORPG Blog

2. Gitr’s WoW Blog

3. AFK Gamer

4. World of S4dfish

5. Metroblogging Azeroth

6. Terra Nova

7. Paladin Sucks

8. World of Warcraft Addicts Blog

9. MMOG Nation

10. WoW Insider

My plus 1 is not a game blog at all. This blog I’ve found to not only provide a lot of great info about blogging, but is also tremendously inspiring.

10 + 1. Problogger

All the blogs that I’ve listed are ones that I’ve found to be a great read. Not all of them are necessarily listed in my blog roll, mainly because I’m slack. I have subscribed to them and many others using Bloglines. I’ve currently got 42 feeds in my list.

I should also note that the blogs I’ve listed here, are listed in no particular order. I’m not rating them in the order in which they are listed.

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Fiddling with my Theme

As you might have noticed, I’ve done a little fiddling with the theme for this blog. I’ve dropped in one of those social bookmarking plugins that are available for Wordpress. This lets you bookmark one of my articles on sites like Digg, Del.icio.us, or Redit to name a few.

I’ve also adjusted the background colour for the posts. I wanted to break the page up a little, make it a bit less ‘black.’

I’d love your feedback on these changes. If you subscribe to a social bookmarking site I haven’t included, let me know and I’ll see if I can add it. Also please let me know if the new colour scheme works for you. I’d hate for you to have problems reading the posts.

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Fallout and the Cost of a Modern MMORPG

Back in the day, I played a little PC RPG called Fallout. It was a game I thoroughly enjoyed, and I must have spent at least 50 hours going through the story the first time. Speaking of which, it was a decent story too.

Several years later, I was dismayed to hear that Fallouts developer, Interplay, was closing its doors.

Fast forward to December 2006. Today. I was doing my usual trawling through various news sites and I came upon a link to a document on the US Securities and Exchange Commission web site. It appears that Interplay is not as dead as it appeared to be, and is currently seeking investment to produce a Fallout MMORPG.

My first response was one of deep interest. The Fallout style of post-apocalyptic science fiction, as far as I know, hasn’t been made into a MMORPG. Fallout offers a fairly rich world as well. One well suited to an online game. As a Sci-Fi fan, I’ve always lamented that Sci-Fi takes a back seat to Fantasy, why, I’m not sure.

As I looked further, some interesting facts began to emerge. The revenue model that Interplay would be using is a subscription based model. No surprises there, subscription models are the most used models in MMORPGs. There is speculation that the MMOG market will grow to 13 billion dollars by 2011. That’s nearly half of the current 30 billion dollar computer game market. Lotsa cold hard cash!

What gets my interest most though, is that there is a budget for the development of the Fallout MMORPG listed in the document. This budget is broken into three components.

The pre-production budget of five million dollars. The production budget of forty million dollars, and the release budget of thirty million.

Pre-production would be all about setting up the facilities. The purchase of development hardware, setting up server facilities, and getting an office set up. There’d be a lot more involved here in the set up though.

Obviously, production is all about the development. From what I understand, WoW had a similar development budget, so it looks like Interplay are not going to cut corners on this one.

The Release budget would be for setting up the servers, the data center, possibly the support center. Some of that might even go into the development of the first expansions. Since this is three quarters of the development budget, I’ll hazard a guess and speculate that Interplay are planning a lot of servers.

So. With a great licence, and a boat load of cash, are Interplay preparing to take on the 800 pound gorilla of the MMORPG industry? I guess we’ll have to wait and see. Three years is a lot of time in some ways, World of Warcraft could go from strength to strength and become even more dominant, or other games could start to put the pressure on. In three years, Interplay could be entering a market with a substantially different landscape.

We’ve got a lot of time to speculate on the Fallout MMORPG. According to the prospectus on the SEC site, development is not planned to start until January 2007, and the game is not slated for release until 2010. I doubt we’ll hear very much from the developers from now until 2008 or 2009. If you have the patience, it might be worth keeping an eye on.

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Extended Downtime for WoW

It looks like the weekly downtime tonight will be extended. I can’t say I didn’t expect this, with the problems that have been plaguing the servers since the WoW 2.0.1 patch.

I had a bit of time on Saturday, so I logged in to Stropp in order to re-assign my talents, pick up a few spells, and maybe polish off a couple of quests. I was in the middle of bartering with the Hunter Trainer ("What do you mean I have to pay for this spell again?") when he stopped talking to me. For a moment or ten I wondered if I had said something to offend him, and then with the sudden disjointedness of doom, I found my self staring at the login screen with a message telling me I had been disconnected from the server. I didn’t log back in, I had other things to do, and it was a hot day (41C).

Hopefully tonight, there will be a new patch applied that will go at least some of the way to alleviating these problems. I know developing software is hard. I know developing software that serves hundreds or thousands of simultaneous users at one time is very hard. And, I know that human behavior introduces all sorts of undesirable side effects into complex systems. I have a lot of sympathy for the World of Warcraft developers, they have a difficult job. It’s one of the reasons I completely support the "when it’s done" philosophy of game development. I want to play stable games.

Unfortunately, these days there are too many games released before they are done. I can’t help feeling that the "Eye of the Storm" patch falls into this category.

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Don’t Take Gold From Strangers

Just a little warning for everyone.

There’s a post over on the forums at WorldofWar.net about the effects of a gold duping bug on one of the servers. It appears that players have been going around giving away ridiculous amounts of gold to all and sundry. This has devastated the economy on the server.

Blizzard have responded by banning, at least temporarily, anyone that has accepted such a donation, and are investigating their account. There is some indication, that accounts with more than five thousand gold are being banned, regardless of how they got the gold, and players are logging back in after being reactivated to find their gold gone.

This has all been happening on the Mannoroth server, but there is no reason to believe that this activity is confined there.

So what ever you do, don’t accept large sums of gold from players you don’t know.

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