Category: Editorials

[Community] Stop Saying Kool-Aid


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On this week’s Community Concerns, I want to talk about a phrase that makes my blood boil every time I hear it: drinking the Kool Aid. If you aren’t familiar with the phrase, “drinking the Kool Aid” means the unquestioned faith in another’s words or instructions. The phrase comes from the 1978 Jonestown Massacre where over nine hundred people died from drinking poisoned Kool Aid. The survivors have heavily objected to the use of this term, because a number of the members were forced at gunpoint to drink the poison and others were not aware that the Kool Aid was poisoned to begin with. It’s insensitive, but it does fit the term alternatively as describing someone who unquestioningly follows another into certain doom, knowingly or otherwise. Look it up.

For some reason, drinking the Kool Aid has become the phrase that everyone and their brother uses in conversation, from politics to gaming and beyond, and it almost acts as a beacon to let you know that you’re dealing with an ignorant person who has no interest in a serious conversation. I personally find it offensive because it is yet another tragic event that people trivialize by using it in reference in a contextually inappropriate manner. It is similar to the kind of people who are banned from a game, kicked out of a store, or arrested for committing a crime, and they immediately refer to the moderators/police as the Gestapo. You know who was as bad as the Gestapo? The Gestapo.

They come from the trolls and the fans. I have seriously considered publicizing the emails I receive whenever I complete an analysis of NCSoft’s quarterly finances. If the company has a positive quarter, I get emails from the City of Heroes and Tabula Rasa fans telling me to stop drinking the Kool Aid and that the reports are fake. If the quarter is bad, I get emails from the NCSoft fans telling me to stop drinking the Kool Aid and to source my data from the reports instead of from the trolls. For the record, all of my data is sourced from NCSoft, but you get the point. Either way, I’m dead in someone’s eyes.

The lesson that I have taken from this is that I will never comprehend the level of cynicism that one must possess to believe that every quarterly report must be viewed with the same skepticism as Enron (I get this analogy quite a bit), that we must assume that every businessman is the next Bernie Madoff (this as well), and that any expression of trust is evidence of naivete or stupidity. I’d have better chances of discovering life that exists in the fourth dimension.

Square Enix Convenes Board To Stop Bad Final Fantasy Games


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Siliconera is reporting that Square Enix has convened a special board of advisors to ensure that future Final Fantasy games meet the standard of quality that customers expect from the series. Where was this crew when Square Enix greenlit Final Fantasy: All The Bravest? No en la casa, apparently. The four man group is made up of Naoki Yoshida, whom many of you will recognize as the director whose leadership revived Final Fantasy XIV into what it is today, Final Fantasy XV co-director Hajime Tabata, Final Fantasy XIII director Motomu Toriyama, and Final Fantasy VI director Yoshinori Kitase.

Many of Square Enix’s other bigwigs are reportedly too busy working on their own projects to spare any time, but the inclusion of Toriyama and Tabata have already raised criticism from the community over their involvement in the games that spurred this board to be put together in the first place. Hopefully they are able to put the series back on the right path.

(Source: Siliconera)

MMOments: Character Relations


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This is more of a question to the roleplayers out there. When you create alternate characters in an RPG, do you ever connect them together in some fashion or do you prefer to keep their stories separated? Have you ever connected characters across multiple games or genres? If you have, you already know how fun it can be to weave a narrative across multiple platforms, adding a bit of spice to your regular gameplay. It is one of those roleplaying mechanics that doesn’t rely on the developer doing anything, it is all up to your imagination.

Now I personally like to jump deep down the rabbit hole. My two characters in Champions Online and DC Universe are “inspired” by my archer from City of Heroes, which in my writing exists as a far off land in Champions Online with both existing as a comic book in DC Universe. The archer from City of Heroes exists in a parallel universe to my archer from Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind who, in turn, is the ancestor of my hero from Oblivion. My Final Fantasy XIV character is a reincarnation of the character from version 1.0 (not too creative there). My Guild Wars 2 characters are all unrelated but members of the same coalition, and my characters from Dungeons and Dragons Online and Neverwinter are similarly members of the same guild and keep in contact regarding their shared objectives.

Otherwise I have no opinion on the subject.

Video of the _____: Elder Scrolls Online Character Creator


I am not an adventurer, but I do play one in video games, and I’ve spent enough time in Cyrodil and Morrowind to know that not every hero is a buff, handsome man or Vogue model with large boobs. In fact, many of them have faces only a mother could love, and that’s pushing it. Luckily, as the character creator trailer for Elder Scrolls Online shows, I can once again reign terror on evil as my pot-bellied archer.

MMOrning Shots: Guild Wars 2Spooky


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I have a deep hatred for mass-group bosses in MMOs. There isn’t anything appealing to me about a creature that requires at least thirty people beating on it for fifteen minutes straight, if not longer, and can flick its wrist and kill most of the support or DPS classes in one or two unavoidable hits. You don’t know what is going on because the clutter of people has caused an information overload in terms of flashing lights and swords swinging about, and the sheer number of people present cause the game to lag and FPS to drop, and soon you’re in a slideshow.

So mass-group bosses just aren’t my thing.

Star Vault Private Placement For Steam


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Star Vault has announced the private placement of 2.6 million SEK in shares to allow for greater development and hone in on a launch on Steam. The issue includes ten million B-shares among several private investors at a price of .26 SEK per share to Markus Hodell, Magnus Uppsäll, William LW Nock and Joan Mir. According to the announcement, obtaining the capital required to bring Mortal Online to Steam was not possible with a simple rights issuance.

Henrik Nystrom commented on the placement, noting his enthusiasm that the revenue will spur development and prepare Mortal Online for a boost in traffic once it is available on Steam.

An example of major updates that many players looking forward to for months is a developed territory-system we call Dominion. This will give players many new play features where one can design their own cities and provide various services to other players. This is a long-sought systems that require large playing surfaces then it’s up to the players to be creative in designing their cities. We estimate that these areas will begin to be launched beginning in October 2013 and continue accelerating until the first quarter of 2014.

You can read the entire announcement at the link below.

(Source: Aktie Torget)

Weapon Bonuses Make Sense In Defiance


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Defiance is a game all about shooting guns, which means that making those guns actually fun to shoot is pretty integral. In Defiance, the random nature of weapons dropping with attributes didn’t always work out to the benefit of the user, such as a sniper rifle with melee bonuses, or single shot guns with increased rates of fire. To remedy this, Trion has released patch 1.105.

The new patch alters drops so that weapons will stack bonuses with each tier of rarity, making rare weapons always more powerful than their lower counterparts. It also ensures that weapons don’t have bonuses that are of no use to their play style.

Our previous system had some quirks that led to weapons receiving bonuses that didn’t always make the most sense: single-shot rocket launchers could have bonuses to their rate of fire and sniper rifles could provide chances to light enemies on fire (cool) with melee attacks (uncool). Weapons also sometimes had effects that weren’t satisfying (like a self-revive bonus. We’ve never heard someone exclaim “man, this bonus is great! I can’t wait to die now!”).

The patch applies this effect retroactively, making your current inventory all the more useful. Check out all of the changes at the link below.

(Source: Defiance)

Darkfall: Unholy Wars Short On Subscribers


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Today’s Taco Tuesday discussion comes to us from the Darkfall: Unholy Wars forum where a rather interesting event has taken place. In a recent stream, Aventurine’s own Creative Director Claus Grovdal revealed some of his own hopes for future content. Grovdal wants to see a new class introduced, one that would deploy turrets and function as a support class much like engineer classes in other MMOs. He would also like to see repeatable prowess quests, introduce more quests into the game, and provide more loot for players, as well as improving the user interface, which Grovdal apparently does not like.

Grovdal also revealed that the game currently holds twenty thousand subscribers, which is quite a feat for a small developer. Unfortunately, he also notes that Aventurine wants thirty five thousand total to cover expenses, putting Darkfall well below its target. With Grovdal as the new creative director, hopefully he can put a plan into action and bring Aventurine up to its target subscription count.

(Source: Stream)

[Community] Guild Wars 2 Authorized Logins


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This week’s Community Concerns is all about Guild Wars 2, primarily questions about emails you may have received from ArenaNet regarding attempts to access your account. Guild Wars 2 utilizes a security method of email authentication whenever you attempt to log in from a new computer. Aside from being an excellent incentive to keep your passwords unique to each account, this method also acts as an early warning system that someone somewhere, has your password, and that you should change it immediately.

The top question I receive on this topic is how to know if these emails are legitimately from ArenaNet. The answer is that you should always assume that these emails are legitimate, change your password and possibly even run your anti-virus program just to be safe if you receive one. Never click on the authorization link unless you are explicitly expecting the email (you logged in and the game blocked you) because if the email is not legitimate, you will end up at a fake website and expose your computer. If the email is legitimate, all you accomplish is to authorize a thief to log in and ransack your account. You have nothing to gain and everything to lose by clicking the authorization, again unless you are explicitly expecting contact.

The second most asked question is how to know if the email is real when you do actually have to authorize your computer. If you receive two emails at the same time and both are asking for authorization, close the client and wait a few minutes, then log in again and the system will email you again. There is roughly a .00001% chance of a fake authorization just happening to be sent to you as you log in for real, and if you are blocked and receive only one email with your location details, you can safely assume that it is legitimate.

This is what the email looks like. Make sure to doublecheck the city, region, and country, before authorizing.

A log-in attempt from the following location is currently awaiting your authorization.

Address: [IP Address]
City: Hamburg
Region: NY
Country: US

This location is approximated based on information provided by your Internet Service Provider. If in doubt, deny the request and try again.

If you are certain this log-in attempt was not made by you, then someone else knows your log-in credentials and you should change your password immediately via Account Management.

For security purposes, we alert you each time your account is accessed from an unrecognized location. To authenticate this log-in attempt, please click the link below:

https://account.guildwars2.com/login/allow?token=[string of numbers & letters]&request=[string of numbers and letters]

Need help or have questions about your Guild Wars account? Visit our support site: http://en.support.guildwars2.com/
Thanks!
–The ArenaNet Team

MMOrning Shots: Dragon’s Spineless


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Today’s MMOrning Shot comes from Funcom, with Age of Conan’s 4.0 update and the release of the Dragon’s Spine. Dragon’s Spine is the first in a series of updates that will bring new content centered around the desert lands to the south and west of the city of Pteion. Check it out on Steam or from Age of Conan’s website.