MMOs

Massively Multiplayer Online games – our first step into the Metaverse.

An hour in Next Island

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“Next Island” just opened today in the Entropia Universe. The time travel-themed island asks players to “join the utopian scientists, great artists and successful entrepreneurs who populate our tropical paradise of Next Island.” Sounded intriguing! I made an account, downloaded the approximately 3 Gb client and headed in. Avatar creation was easy enough. Though the … Read more

Daily Blogroll 12/10 — Bite from your wallet edition

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I was thinking about some of the things we know about Star Wars: The Old Republic. It’s going to be a subscription game. It cost a hell of a lot to produce — perhaps more than $100 million. And yet they think they’re gonna have no trouble making their money back even if they have less than a million subscribers.
It’s no secret. I can do the math. They’re gonna be bleeding their subscribers absolutely friggin’ dry in the Bioware cash shop. But that’s okay! That would have really bothered me a couple years ago, but now — I’m buying space ships in STO and pets in Wizard101 and heck, EQ2 is even taking the bloodsucking thing to a whole new level by adding a new Vampire race to their cash shop.
So yeah. Totally there. Wave of the future, folks. Onto the blogroll.

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Daily Blogroll 12/9 — Time Travel edition

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A little later, we’ll be talking about a virtual world to a “Time Travel” theme, which will send customers through differently themed worlds. Like, “Now you’re in Roman World! Through that door is Dinosaur World! Take the trolley to Wild West World!”. I don’t know about you, but this seems more like a theme park than time travel. I think I’d keep waiting for the killer robots to spring out from behind the bushes.
What’s the CENTRAL ELEMENT of any time travel story? It’s the ability or at least desire to change the way things happen. Without that, it’s NOT time travel and it’s NOT a time travel story.
I know, I know — you’re going to point to Fred Hoyle’s 1966 novel “October the First is Too Late”* (of which a totally legal excerpt is here). I maintain that even Sir Fred never considered that book a time travel story, even though it was superficially about an Earth fractured in Time.
On to the games, I guess.

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Daily Blogroll 12/8 — Holy NDA, Batman! edition

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Superhero comics have to be the most consistently grim form of literature imaginable. Here you have people with cosmic supernatural powers, and those powers bring them no joy. Instead, they are crushed by tragedy after unthinkable tragedy. Their lives are living nightmares, and for most heroes, there is no peace even in death. Satan once bet God that he could shake the faith of his most pious worshiper, a rich man named Job. God said sure, go for it, and Job was robbed of his wealth and his family. Satan went on to wrack Job with terrible illnesses, but Job struggled on, never losing faith. We see that in the Book of Job was written the very first superhero story.
I guess this is a sort of roundabout way of celebrating the lifting of the DC Universe Online NDA. But what of The Agency, the other SOE Action-MMO property? News of both, and more, after the break.

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Daily Blogroll 12/7 — Expansion edition

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The Imperial Japanese Navy attacked Pearl Harbor 69 years ago today. Now we’re having a little payback at the expense of the whole world. I know a lot of people who plan to take days off to play their way through the entire expansion as quickly as they can. My cousin Tom even (jokingly, I hope), regretting that he had to work, thought he might let his son take the day off from school to play.
I’d like to be more excited about the WoW expansion. But — I just don’t think a game can make me feel like that anymore.
On with the blogroll — it’s been a long weekend. I was too busy playing a game which cannot be named to write much, so there’s a lot to catch up.

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