NEWS? WHAT A WACKY IDEA!

Oh, regularity and timing. Why hast thou forsaken me?

Vanguard News: First it was Kendrick. Then it was Akkirus. Now it’s a hat trick with the news that Lawrence “Myrlokar” Poe has left Sigil. As a side note, Amanda Tarr nee Poe is still working as Lead Programmer at Sigil.

For the sake of clarity, let’s review. 3 Senior Designers have now left Sigil within a year. That’s 3 Senior Designers that have a history with Brad and Co. up and leaving for...well, God knows what, but I’d assume it has a greener hue. I mean, that’s the kind of thing you do.

Now, yeah, while it’s not uncommon for MMO developers to move on when they feel they have achieved all they want to at one studio, it’s a bit of a little tradition that you stay at least until release day (the other, unspoken tradition involves Mrs. Lash and a 50 dollar bill). That way, in the very least, you’ve got “Designed DikuMUD clone #24 from concept to release, resulting in Most Awesome Launch Ever” on your resume. At somewhere near the most, you learn some important new skills as you survive another MMO launch.

Instead, these guys skipped out on an unfinished product and a studio that most likely holds a few friends. So just what is going on? Regardless of what Smed thinks, this stuff is interesting to us MMO customers and observers because with the MMO industry fostering such a close business-customer relationship, some players are drawn to certain designers, artists or coders more than others. If not akin to fandom, it’s a genuine interest and the desire to play the product of a favorite MMO developer. Knowing what that developer is up to is a bit of a necessity in this case. Odd that.

Enter stage left the FOHrums on which a thread discussing Lawrence’s leaving evoked Vanguard beta testers and their less than sparkling Vanguard reviews. Oloh would have spanked you naughty kids if he could, ya know.

With the state of the Vanguard beta being prodded with sharp sticks and questioned once again – the latest in a series –, Brad McQuaid had some ‘splaining to do.

* Flames a previous poster, telling him he has no idea what Vanguard beta is like.

* Questions Vanguard being singled out. (It hasn’t Brad. Every MMO that goes through beta will get its turn at being picked apart on forums around the Internets)

* States that the changes being made are merely tweaks and not a redirection of concept.

* Discusses how Vanguard will be a success and talks subscriber numbers.

* He’s excited (I agree with him on this point)

* And he likes WoW.

* Finds it is sometimes like talking to, well, a forum poster. Takes his ball and goes home.

* He’ll be back.

Putting out some fires in his own backyard, Brad further discusses some wishful numbers and effectively admits to the rumor going around that the simultaneous beta player numbers have dropped to something in the region of 100.

Meanwhile, I’m still waiting for my beta invite.

Dungeons & Dragons News: From the rumor mill comes this:

1) Ken Troop has left Turbine. Effectively confirmed in this comment thread. With the new DDO module just coming out this week, I’m hoping Ken didn’t want a credit on it.

2) From the same QT3 thread, Engineering Director Justin Quimby has also left Turbine.

3) From the same post in that QT3 thread, in cahoots with a VN Board thread, DDO’s subscriber base is estimated to be around the 40,000-50,000 range with a concurrent player figure of 15,000. This goes hand in hand with the observed low server numbers and boxes not exactly flying off shelves.

Not a rumor: Turbine patches dragon loot in with the new module. To be specific, dragon loot that may only be obtained by one of two players on the raid as a result of being rewarded with one of two glyphs dished out by the raid leader. That is, if the raid leader doesn’t give them to close friends or auctions them off to the highest bidder first. Oh, and don’t forget. You’ve got to wait 66 hours until you can do the instance again and watch the raid leader give the glyphs to someone else.

Intended to be a way to reward players that don’t cause trouble in raids and groups? If so, Turbine forgot one important part of the equation – humans are, at their core, selfish. Add in the anonymity of the Internet, and they mutate into selfish arseholes. MMOs already have a mechanism for dealing with griefers. It’s called never finding a group again because of your idiotic actions.

Other than that, it’s just a lame attempt to introduce some kind of repeatable content – if it can be held up to that spotlight – at the end of the game where players have reached level 10 and found there is absolutely nothing for them to do. I’ve never used the term catass before because I’ve never been fond of it, but this reeks of it. See the Other News for the SUN preview and what DDO should have implemented as part of the answer to the lack of high end content.

Warhammer News: Something tells me Mythic may be trying to market their new MMO.

Other News: Spend The Night goes frigid…Nevermind. EA founder Trip Hawkins takes the term “phone sex” to a different level...Sigil makes seekrit sauce once again. My guess is they aim to become another SOE – MMOs and online console games will be the fad with these youngsters once they give up their obsession with the Wireless...Ensemble Studios, developers of Age of Empires, thinks MMOs could make some money and that’d be a nice thing to have...SUN preview mentions players may “create battle maps set to your level with your choice of monsters, terrain and which other players you want to adventure with”. DDO slaps its forehead and asks “Why didn’t I think of that?”…Half a million people log on to play Guild Wars Factions. 475,000 roll a female Assassin...SOE adds comic books to the Station. Ability to buy higher quality circles and speech boxes to be patched in with an Exchange server at later date...News Flash! Media discovers sex in games. Rumors are it may sell as well. Quote of choice:

The article points out that for clients a penis, simply to participate costs L$1500