Tabula Rasa Starts Taking Preorders

The up and coming science fiction MMO, Tabula Rasa may still be in closed beta, but they’re definitely looking ahead.

This morning I received an email announcing that NCSoft are now taking preorders for Tabula Rasa. The preorder boxes have begun shipping to retailers across North America and Europe. Players can also head over to the PlayNC.com store to purchase the digital download.

Players who purchase the preorder will get a number of bonuses, including:

• a three day head start on the live servers,
• two exclusive character emotes,
• exclusive Shell Bot or Pine Ock in-game non-combat pets to accompany their characters,
• a serial code for unlocking bonus in-game content and access to the beta test,
• a DVD with the game client, and bonus wallpapers and art.

The preorder only costs 4.99 US dollars. It looks like if you buy the game from the digital store, the DVD, wallpapers and art won’t be included. There’s no mention of them on the product page. However, for those of you who are itching to get into the beta it looks like you can get immediate entry into it for a pretty minor cost.

However, there is no mention of a collectors edition that I could find. That doesn’t mean one isn’t being planned, just that you can’t preorder it. I also couldn’t find any mention of when the game would be released in Australia and the rest of the world. The digital purchase might be the quickest option for those of us outside Nth America and Europe.

The game is slated for release in the northern fall season.

Popularity: 33%

Create Your Own MMOG

There are a few companies out there that supply the tools and middleware necessary to create a Massively Multiplayer Online Game. The problem for a small developer, or a group of enthusiasts, is that the tools don’t come cheap. I think the tech for the Bigworld engine will cost somewhere in the mid to high five digits. Time for that second mortgage. Maybe third and fourth too. And then you have to develop the content for your game.

Enter Multiverse with all the middleware that you’ll need, and it’s free.

Well almost free.

The company has just issued a press release regarding the version 1.0 release of its Virtual World Development Platform.The platform has been in beta for a while. At least a year I think. And it is finally ready for prime time.

You can use the development platform completely free of charge. You only start paying once you start earning money from your game. What’s more, the fee is only 10 percent of the gross revenue you earn. That’s a pretty sweet deal.

For the skeptical among you, check out the website. There are some demo games available that show the capabilities of the engine.

Of course, an engine does not a game make. There’s a huge amount of content that goes into a MMOG. That’s up to you.

Now it’s your turn. What sort of MMOG would you like to make?

Popularity: 6%

Wrath of the Lich King

It appears a lot of the pundits were very close to correct. Blizzards announcement at Blizzcon of Wrath of the Lich King, their second expansion for World of Warcraft wasn’t a surprise, nor did it hold any surprises.

In the cold, harsh northlands…
The Lich King Arthas has set in motion events that could lead to the extinction of all life on Azeroth. With the armies of the undead and the necromantic power of the plague threatening to sweep across the land, only the mightiest heroes can oppose the Lich King’s will and end his reign of terror for all time.

Blizzard Entertainment’s latest expansion to World of Warcraft – Wrath of the Lich King – adds a host of epic content to the existing game world. Players will achieve soaring levels of power, explore a vast new continent, and battle other high-level heroes to determine the fate of Azeroth. As you pit yourself against the dangers of the north, prepare to:
Features

• • Master the necromantic powers of the Death Knight - World of Warcraft’s first Hero class.
  • Quest to level 80, gaining potent new abilities and talents along the way.
  • Learn the craft of spell augmentation with the new Inscription profession.
  • Brave the harsh new continent of Northrend, the icy domain of the Lich King.
  • Engage in epic siege warfare, deploying mighty siege engines to lay waste to destructible buildings in your path.
  • Transform your hero’s look with new character-customization options, including new hairstyles and dances.
  • Explore perilous new dungeons filled with some of the deadliest creatures — and greatest treasures — on Azeroth.
  • And much, much more…

Most of the recent rumours talked about 80 as the new level cap, the setting of Northrend, and even the inclusion of the Death Knight hero class. I have a feeling there has been a little judicious leaking of advanced info, or maybe the Blizzard Devs read Tobolds blog. His recent thoughts on a fictional expansion called The Frozen Jihad have some striking similarities to the Wrath of The Lich King. Well, the cold frosty bits at least. Maybe they should offer him a consultants fee.

I’m definitely of mixed feelings regarding this new expansion. I think it’s good to have regular expansions, and open up new areas. But, to a large extent this appears on the surface to be more of the same. I’m sure we’ll hear more in the coming months about the much, much more… feature, and what Blizzard haven’t told us could be as important as what they have just announced. But at this point, I find myself less excited than with the The Burning Crusade.

I like that Siege warfare is being introduced. It’s always been a big part of the RTS games, and it’s logical to see it introduced into WoW. I expect it will play a part in the Battlegrounds and not so much in the PvE game, but you never know. I also like the inclusion of character customisation. I’ve always felt that this is one area where World of Warcraft could (should) have improved. I played City of Heroes a few years ago, and haven’t been truely happy with any games character creation system since.

A new profession doesn’t really do it for me. Not at all. I’ve become especially jaded about WoW professions. With the exception of Alchemy, the manufacturing professions are just big money sinks. None of the gear that can be made is anywhere near as good as the drops of mobs and quest rewards. Hopefully, Inscription can add something new to the whole profession thing.

As for the release date. No announcement was made about when the Frozen Jihad err… Wrath of the Lich King is to be released. Blizzard said just prior to the release of The Burning Crusade that they were planning on releasing one expansion a year. Based on this, I’d expect WotLK to be released either just prior to Christmas, or toward the end of January.

What do you think; Are you going to rush out on release day for this one? Or, if you are considering quitting World of Warcraft, is this new expansion enough to keep you playing?

Popularity: 16%

Cool Link: More Terrorism Commentary

A little update on yesterdays mocking of Australian bureaucracy regarding terrorists using World of Warcraft and Second Life to conduct training for their nefarious schemes.

Terra Nova has put up an article; More Dots! Cried the Terrorist, that gives their take on the Australian Newspaper article. As usual Terra Nova takes a thoughtful approach to the topic. Not perhaps as derisive and mocking as I.

My favorite quote from the article.

But we’re always haunted by the prophetic imagination of Gibson, Stephenson, Sterling, Stross: even those who have never heard of them or the Metaverse have been affected by a collective unconscious that expects there to be only a few steps between raiding Blackwing Lair and post-Singularity downloads of our consciousness into Moravecian cyborgs striding through AI-generated simulacra.

Definitely worth a read, even if just for the colorful phraseology.

Popularity: 5%

Bethesda Gets into the MMO Game

Daily Game is reporting that the parent company of Bethesda Softworks has just opened a MMO division to focus exclusively on developing massive online games.

Bethesda Softworks is the developer behind The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion which can be easily described as a MSORPG or Massively Single Player Offline Role Playing Game. Oblivion is a huge game with lots of open ended content. It just felt a little empty to me. That would be easily remedied by changing the S to an M. Perhaps The Elder Scrolls V will be the object of the MMO divisions affections.

The company is also working on the upcoming Rogue Warrior, and Fallout 3 which is slated for release in 2008. I doubt that the MMO division will be dealing with this simply because there is supposedly a Fallout MMO already in development and the license wouldn’t be available. Hmmm. I wonder how that one is going?

This is definitely an interesting development. More and more game developers are working on MMO titles. A few years ago there were a handful of MMOs in development, and the pundits were saying that there wasn’t enough market share for all of them.

Then along came Blizzard with World of Warcraft and changed all the rules. It’s amazing what a big success will inspire.

I have to wonder if Bethesda Softworks have already started a MMO title, and how far along they are. It’s doubtful that they would just create a new division without something already in the pipeline. What do you think, will Bethesda be releasing a new MMO in the near future? And what do you think it will be?

Popularity: 18%

Virtual Terrorists

While I have fairly strong political opinions, I don’t discuss them on this blog. Partly because I don’t want to offend my readers, but mostly because this is a blog about games. And while games have all sorts of politics in them (guild politics, developer/player politics) they don’t usually have much to do with the real world body politik. Games are meant to be fun, relaxing, and a diversion from the real world.

Until now.

Sometimes you read something like this article in The Australian newspaper which makes you grieve for the future of intelligence. Terrorists Practice on Cyber Game. Here’s a quote.

The head of the Australian High Tech Crime Centre in Canberra, Kevin Zuccato, has warned that terrorists can gain training in games such as Second Life and another game known as the World of Warcraft, using weapons similar to those in the real world.

Wha?

As far as I know, the only weapon World of Warcraft has that is in any way similar to real world (modern) weapons are the guns. And they’re pretty slow. Take a soldier in any of the worlds poorest armies, and he’s probably packing an AK47 which has a much higher rate of fire than the most epic WoW gun. I doubt that even an army of a thousand berserking Orc Jihadists would in any way pose much of a threat to a squad of well armed US or Aussie soldiers.

I don’t know about Second Life though since I’ve never played it. From what I understand, players can create almost anything in the game. This means there is a lot more scope for evil mischief. Maybe the terrorists are planning on sending a million flying penises to disrupt the next sitting of Congress or the Australian Parliment. As that Dwarf in the Burning Steppes says, (I can’t remember his name) that will certainly scare the children.

Here’s another quote.

International terrorism expert Rohan Gunaratna says the use of the virtual world for terrorist training is a new phenomenon that has not been discussed outside intelligence agencies.

And do you know why it hasn’t been discussed outside of intelligence agencies?

Because they don’t want to look like bloody idiots.

This is the same sort of rubbish that was spouted about how children were using Doom to practice using guns, after the Columbine High School shooting. I’m sorry, but I can’t see how swinging a mouse around in a game gives you any skills towards the real world use of a gun. That’s akin to saying that a high level Command and Conquer player should be directing a real world army, since he’s really good at strategy.

The scary thing is that our governments are using the terrorism angle to tread on our freedoms. Last Friday, while driving home from work, there was a news report that said that the Australian Government was considering legislation to ban Film, Literature, and Games that in any way promote terrorism.

With reports like the one in The Australian being presented does this mean that the government would consider banning WoW?

You could play as a team of terrorists in Counterstrike. Does that count as promoting terrorism?

And what about movies like V for Vendetta that promote the violent overthrow of a government. Will the Australian government ban those sort of movies?

I’m wondering where it will all end.

Now back to your regularly scheduled programming. No more politics. I promise.

Popularity: 6%

PvP Poll

Seeing as I’ve recently started a Rogue on a PvP server, I thought it would be interesting to find out how many of my readers were into PvP. So I’ve put together a poll to find out.

I’m also interested in your opinions on PvP. After you have voted, please add a comment to tell me why you chose that option.

Popularity: 10%

July 07 Wrapup

July has been something of a transitional month for me. I quit my job in June and finished up there right at the end of the month. I’ve now gone back into contracting and started a six month contract about ten days ago. I was at my old employer for over seven years and it does feel a little odd adjusting to a new place and new people. But the work is interesting and the money is good.

Gaming and blogging burnout has been a bit of an issue for me this year. The year started well with lots of enthusiasm, but from April through June it has been a real struggle just to get in and do any of it. There were a few times when I strongly considered shutting down the blog. I think a big part of this was the issues that were occuring at work at the time.

I think I started to feel a turn around during July. Even though my new job is pretty busy (I’m coming in late on a large long term project) and has a steep learning curve, I’ve been feeling more relaxed. I’ve also decided to play what I want, when I want. No more feeling obligated to play a certain amount.

New Blog Theme

July also saw the introduction of the new Stropp’s World theme. That took a lot longer than I expected. I first started by trying to build a Wordpress theme from scratch myself, but it was a lot more work than I expected. I then decided to get someone else to do it for me. Unfortunately that didn’t work out too well. After a lot of emails and waiting for results it became apparent that it wasn’t going to happen. At that point I selected the theme you see now, made a couple of mods to the banner for the title and installed it, after upgrading to the latest Wordpress version.

Poll Results

The July Poll question was: The New Look is:

All up nine people voted with the following result; 44% (4) think it is Absolutely Brilliant, 33% (3) think it Is a Reasonable Effort, 11% (1) think their Grandmother could do better, and 11% (1) couldn’t get it to work in their browser.

World of Warcraft

After several months where I haven’t touched World of Warcraft, I decided to see if I could revive my flagging interest by doing something different. I’d never really played on a PvP server before so I decided to create a Rogue on a PvP server. I also bought Joana’s 1- 70 Horde Guide. That’s also something I haven’t done before.

So far so good. Stropp the Rogue has reached level 10 and has done the Rogue quest which earned him a nice dagger. No PvP interaction yet though. I guess that will happen big time when he reaches the Barrens.

Lord of the Rings Online

Lord of the Rings Online is on the backburner at the moment. It’s one of the downsides of the Lifetime Subscription payment model that there is less imperative to play the game since there is no monthly fee to be justified. That’s an upside too. I can put it on the backburner without worry about wasting the monthly fee. I’m not done with this game yet.

Everquest 2

My chronic altaholism manifested itself with the creation of several Everquest 2 during July. Nothing spectacular. I created a few Arasi (evil fairies) and played them up to around level 11.

XBox 360

Some friends gave me a gift voucher for my birthday and I bought Forza Motorsport 2. I also went out and splurged on a Logitech Steering Wheel and Pedals to give me that authentic behind-the-wheel feeling. My easy chair is now the cockpit of a racecar! Very cool game. I’ve never really been a sports game fan, but Forza is a lot of fun. However, I’m no way near ready for the PvP tournaments yet.

Site Stats

• According to AWStats, Stropp’s World received 3508 unique visitors who visited 6003 times and viewed 18597 pages.
• The number of RSS subscribers exceeded 150 for the first time.
• Akismet blocked 15000 pieces of spam for the first time. Can you imagine a blog with 15000 spam comments? It would be unreadable.
• World of Warcraft Addiction was the top search term used to find my site. A blog post made last year still gets results in the search rankings.

Blog Experiments

You probably noticed the removal of all of the Google advertisements and the other advertising banners. The blog looks much nicer now. I did put some affiliate links to some WoW guides on the sidebar. I didn’t expect to see any earnings come out of them, but I’ve been pleasantly surprised.

I also did an experiment with Stumbleupon over a few days last month to see if I could increase my blog traffic. While traffic increased while the SU campaign was running, it dropped back to normal levels when it finished.

Goals for August

• Get back to posting more regularly. There’s a few tricks I want to try to get this happening.
• Get back into a more regular gaming schedule. This is a bit trickier. I’ve got a few things on the burners at the moment. Coupled with a busy work schedule my time is tight.
• Look into a banner or logo for the blog. I’m essentially using a slightly modified version of the Dark Alley theme banner. I’d like to get something more suitable for a MMO blog.
• Continue experimenting with Stumbleupon to increase blog traffic. Even though the small experiment I conducted in July didn’t achieve spectactular results, I have a feeling it’s still worth continuing the experiment.
• Achieve 200 RSS subscribers. This would be really cool.

Popularity: 10%