n3rfed

BAH HUMBUG

Merry Christmas / Hanukkah / Sacrificial pagan festival to you all, and may all your presents be server crash-free.

This site will be getting back to "normal" sometime next week when my connection is back to normal and I'm done with meeting all those relatives you only see every 5 years and who live/hide in the mountains for a good reason.

Hell, maybe by then I'll be using Lum's old layout as well.

Have fun.

 

EVERQUEST 2. NOW TWO TIMES THE HAWT CYBERING.

"Hail! My name is Ceciliantas. I'll be your tank and cyb0r partner for this group"

Obviously this Paladin prays at a very different kind of church.

UPDATE

Apparently everyone and their virtual dog wants to get in on some hot hot Paladin luvin', and this has naturally screwed up the above link.

So your caring and sharing Cosmik offers you a link offering the extended version of the Ceciliantas Erotic Saga (and yes, it turns out the "she" behind the female avatar was, in fact, a "he". Can anyone honestly say they are surprised?).

Oh, fer Christ's sake. Did I just pimp?

GRP LOOKING 4 DB ADMIN TO HELP CAMP SERVERS!

In either a case of freaky cosmical conincidence or SOE scrambling to stop the sky from falling (take your pick as to which is the most likely), and according to a post here, 18 hours into the Great EQ2 Fire of 2004 this job was posted on the SOE corporate site.

It's a pity they didn't bother hiring a beta testing period.

ULTIMA ONLINE MOVES TO PEEKAY SHADOWBANE

Well, almost.

I'M NOT DEAD. TIS' ONLY A FLESHWOUND!

Time flies and the MMOG juggernaut rolls on when you're still trying to find your damn modem amongst the multitude of brown storage boxes littering your lounge room floor. 53 simoleons and a piece of virtual dirt to the first person who can tell me which box it currently resides in.

And what has happened since I last put finger to keyboard? Well, a whole damn lot. Serves me right for... well... being me.

EQ2, not content with being upstaged by WoW once again, has decided "If Blizzard can have a couple of their servers offline for 24 hours, we can beat that, newb!". Apparently a minor patch did a very un-minor thing - like wiping quest journals, removing citizenship, and reseting quests that gave access to particular zones. As laid out here, the typical server shutdown soon followed, with a rollback also being put into motion. All servers, right across the board, experienced at least 24 hours of downtime, and as I write this little blurb, a number of servers still have yet to experience the heartwarming cries of "That was my camp, u f4g!".

The motto "You're in our NEW world now" is having a good old chuckle right about now.

***

A fellow called Scott, known to some as that chap Lum and to others as their saviour and bane rolled into one, continues to re-dabble in the black arts and, as observed by some people, seemingly gets closer to the Lum of ye olde (I'd like to think it was me that gave the kick to the behind, what with the "change" occuring soon after I started this fabulous site. Hey, I have an ego to stroke too, don'tchaknow). Naturally, this grates with a few people - namely the rantees. Oh, and those people that don't like dancing too.

Case in point: Scott talks about griefing. It sucks and it's easy to do because of this Interrornet thingy we all use where no one has to suffer the consequences of raping and pillaging the 5-minute-old newbie.

Some child got his diaper in a twist over this, and called Scott names. (Hmm. Is there a name for the psychological disorder in which you abuse someone, make a snide remark about "MMOG luminaries", and yet use the exact same page layout and style created and made famous by the same guy you abuse?)

Scott offers his rebuttal, consisting of a nice serve of "Grow-the-fuck-up-and-move-on".

Of course, does any of this really matter? According to this guy, no, UO is a dead fish.

***

Now that players have had time to prepare their new post-Catacombs Flavor-Of-The-Month toons, Mythic has announced some future plans. A new batch of character customizations will become available, thereby helping you look more individual. Expect only 1 in 6 people to now use the same appearance.

Mythic has also announced an industry-first server cluster feature, allowing players from unbalanced servers to fight in shared frontiers (PvP), and if wanted by the player, shared homelands (PvE). Now, while I reckon this looks pretty interesting, there's;

a) No way I'm changing my name if someone from one of the shared servers also has the same name.
b) No way I'm travelling from Aegir to Moderngrav 3 times just to finally find out which server has been designated by the players as the one to kill Moderngrav redcaps on.

The third plan revolves around instanced RvR areas - said to be one of the most requested features, and something I'll be sure to check out. Yet, am I the only one that sees this becoming the most popular way to RvR and depleting the frontiers of players, just so people who miss the old days of Emain 8v8 gank groups can once again brag over their mad assist-train sk1llz?

***

It's all fun and games until Blizzard/Vivendi pokes you in the eye. And the wallet.

As suggested in the comments, good luck Blizzard/Vivendi on trying to stand the EULA up in court if the people making money in this case never "signed" the EULA. You'll need it. But hey, maybe you'll get lucky. You can score with this bright spark of a judge again.

***

"Online gaming would be great if it weren't for the fact that you have to play with other people."

No doubt that comment could stem from something like this, and is a clear case of why people suck.

For those not shocked and bewildered enough, apparently the game in question was Asheron's Call. The Darktide server to be exact. So yes, people still play there. You may close your gaping mouth now.

Meanwhile, South Bend is about to have a visit from this guy.

TRIBUTE TO BOOBS, RAPPERS AND FUCKWITS. JUST YOUR TYPICAL SPIKETV VIDEO GAMES AWARDS SHOW.

A while back I wrote about the SpikeTV Video Games Awards, already hinting at the expected high standard of this video games industry respected night of pats on the back.

Since then the show has aired, the special guest artists have gone back to their bling, the boobies have been covered up, and analysis has been offered.

I'll only add the comment that how pleased I am to see an "awards show" like this gets such limelight and attention in the mainstream media.

The industry even has its own awards show. Held in Santa Monica on Tuesday, the second annual Video Game Awards showered kudos on "Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas." The title, the latest in a controversial series set amid a background of crime, won game of the year and best male performer for actor Samuel L. Jackson, who did the voice-over for one of its characters.

Because if there's one way to break the misguided view that all gamers are sex-obsessed homocidal morons with a large grudge and an even larger gun, it's to show everyone via the "industry's own" awards show that gamers are sex-obsessed homocidal morons who can put aside the gun for 2 hours and have an orgy congratulate one another.

And in case you were wondering, COH won the multiplayer award. Now, if you'll excuse me. My penis tells me I need to go buy a new video game.

MATRIX ONLINE DELAYED. HARDLY A "WOAH" TO BE HEARD.

Dip me in strawberry jello and call me very much unshocked.

And courtesy of F13, this little nugget of love:

Fun fact: Coding's only functional since a week on the QA server.

Oops, I think I broke the NDA, but right now I stopped caring. They're throwing a new (personally favorite) subsystem at us, and don't give us the means of testing it, like skill boosters and shit like that. It's basically a more versatile version of COH, but how the beta's run made me lose the faith meanwhile.

And every fucking patch's like a gigabyte, thanks to the great resource packaging and managing. Each time a minor thing was changed, the whole container file it was in needs to be downloaded. No delta containers or something. SWG was better at it.

Well, at least it seems to be living up to the high standards of the movie sequels.

LIKE YOU REALLY CARE

Finally moved into my new abode last weekend. And what fun it is when your furnishings currently consist of a bag of clothes and some magazines. Twice as bad, there's not even a nudie mag amongst them.

Removalists have signed in blood that I'll get my phat l00t the middle of this week, so I'm looking at some actual, you know, news or such being posted on this dusty page soon. Hooray, my dreams of a best-selling Christmas edition are still intact.

Now while I sob over the echoes in my apartment, have a read over at the Corp about why you, Mr and Ms SOE Customer, are worse than a number. You're a 16-digit number with an accompanying expiry date and signature.

WORLD OF EBAY

Want to buy a speed-hacked, botted to level 60, uber flavor-of-the-month character on eBay? Well, your days are numbered if Blizzard has their way.

This is not allowed, and our support and legal teams are working with eBay to shut down sale of World of Warcraft accounts and items permanently. However

However...we like money and so this won't take effect until each of us have a new sports car?
However...I'm busy teaching Nebu how to use permalinks and can't finish this sentence?
However...I just don't care for your bitching so I'm outta here?

Either way, a noble sentiment on the part of Blizzard. However (and I'll finish this sentence), can we expect this to be as (in)effective as other efforts to keep MMOG sales off eBay? All signs point to yes.

If by chance Blizzard does bend the space-time continuum and Beelzebub decides to buy a pair of skis, we're only likely to find the rats moving to another ship.

It seems there's only one company that is likely to win in the MMORPG "My game can beat up your game" wars. That company is eBay.

That's the way life goes. That's the way capitalism goes. Now heal your shattered dreams of a fair and even world with a good laugh courtesy of Ubiq.

DAOC CATACOMBS OPEN FOR YOUR SPELUNKING PLEASURE

No matter what new-fangled MMORPG comes out, I always find myself heading back to DAOC. There's just something about the RvR that makes you yelp with glee and gets you insanely pissed off at the same time (ah, a marriage made in heaven). I think it may have something to do with all the damn stealthers.

So, here's a plug for it, and a mention to boot that the new Catacombs expansion is now open.

You know I'll be giving precasting a go.

Hmmm. I've forgotten something.

Oh, yes.

"Beyotch".