Just another nerd.
Okay, maybe I will actually stop playing WoW at some point after all. Like maybe Spring 2009 when Cryptic is currently projecting it will launch Champions Online. Hell. Yes.
Somewhere in my basement I’ve got a 1st edition copy of the original Champions from 1981. I forced my grandparents to drive 60 miles to the only decent comic book/game store just so I could nab a copy the day it finally arrived in stock. What an amazing game that was/is.
Back in November, City of Heroes developer Cryptic sold all of its interests in City of Heroes/Villains to NCSoft. The speculation was that Cryptic wanted to devote all of its time and energy to the Marvel Universe MMO which it was developing for Microsoft. Except this month, Microsoft went ahead and announced that it was ending development on the Marvel Universe MMO. WTF?
The odd thing is that Microsoft flak Shane Kim strongly implied that the reason they killed the Marvel MMO was that they did not believe they could achieve World of Warcraft-like subscription levels with it. Maybe someone finally showed them City of Heroes/Villains subscription numbers, which are in the 140,000 area.
My wife and I played CoH for a couple months and the game was fairly good, but the interface was absolutely awful. A well-done superhero MMO, especially with the Marvel license, could certainly expand on COH’s numbers, so it is a bit odd to see Microsoft of all companies throw in the towel.
Hilarious but true press release from the Dungeons & Dragon Online developers announcing new “Premium Services.”
For the low, low, low price of just $19.95, you can now rename your character or guild in DDO.
ZOMG.
Blues News had a thorough summary of the controversy that hit EVE online a couple weeks ago.
The short version is that employees of CCP, the company that publishes EVE, also play in the game. Some of the employees were part of a corporation called Band of Brothers that allegedly were using their position as developers and game masters to cheat by giving their fellow alliance members items that they hadn’t actually earned.
There is an obvious tension and conflict of interest where a company clearly might want its developers to actually play the game to experience issues that players face. On the other hand, developers and game masters obviously have access to inside information and, in some cases tools, that give them advantages over other players that could be easily abused.
In a game like World of Warcraft, the developer could ameliorate this problem somewhat by having developers play on servers where they don’t have any special privileges or access. In a game like Eve, however, this isn’t possible because there is only one world/server.
CCP didn’t do itself any favors by opening a thread on the controversy explaining its position and asking for feedback and then closing that thread the same day as players pointed out that the CCP statement didn’t really address most of their real concerns.
This Reuters article about a study of the effects of MMOs on sociability had me laughing out loud.
Constance Steinkhuehler, of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and Dmitri Williams, of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, studied the effects of playing Asheron’s Call I and II on 750 subjects (half divided into a non-game playing control group). They also conducted a two-year study of people playing “Lineage.”
They concluded that MMOs themselves are not anti-social activities and do not lead to anti-social behaviors. According to Reuters (emphasis added),
Steinkuehler and Williams conclude that the games helped players gather a type of social capital known as “bridging,” which involves making informal connections with others, while they didn’t generally help people build stronger social bonds.
Such “weaker” social links are important, the researchers say, because they offer players the opportunity to be exposed to diverse worldviews that they may not encounter in the real world.
Players who did become more deeply involved in the games did run the risk of having virtual relationships replace real-life ones, however, the researchers note. However, to see these online communities as an entirely bad thing is short-sighted, they say.
I can think of quite a few real life relationships that I would like to replace with virtual relationships. After all, not all real life relationships are panaceas.
Source:
Some online games may enhance sociability. Reuters Health, September 6, 2006.
UrbanDead.Com is a free, web-based multi-player game in which the player takes on the role either of zombie or survivor. The game has a nice Wiki with lots of details and game background.