I haven't seen a review this positive in quite a while.
Aug 22, 2009
Aug 21, 2009
It was already a cataclysm
World of Warcraft is getting another expansion, at a date yet to be determined.
Battlefield 1943 delayed
"We haven't released a Frostbite [DICE's game engine] built game on PC, so going into this project we lacked a starting foundation we had on Console. There are also many different and unique challenges to the PC that has lead to us pushing the release even further to Q1 CY 2010 [early next year]," producer Gordon Van Dyke told G4tv.com. "This was a hard pill to swallow, but it was absolutely needed to ensure the features and functionality that PC Players have come to expect from Battlefield on PC are not missing." What are those things? Direct X 9 and 10 support, 32 player matches, support for joysticks for flying, and voice over IP.
Aug 20, 2009
The PunkBuster of Finance
Eve Online has a deep economic system, and as IUN reported previously, that system is ripe for exploitation. In addition to embezzling hundreds of billions in ISK (the game's currency), unscrupulous players have inflated the prices of mission-related items, and depleted salable resources in the game world. In the real world, they've hacked user accounts, committed credit card fraud, and hoarded server cycles with their bots (diminishing CPU resources for everyone by about 30%). All of this for the purpose of selling game money for real-world money.
CCP came up with a solution, and called it "Unholy Rage":
In the weeks and months building up to June 22nd we monitored and analyzed activity of ISK sellers, and in particular, their supporting groups of macro-miners, ratters, mission farmers and other RMT [Real Money Trading] related units. The information obtained by this research was then used to identify further RMT type accounts and to prepare lists to process in the action. The preparations also included identifying various items of interest that we wanted to monitor and measure, such as market activity, server performance, petition trends and so on, as our intent was to examine the effects of the action in a scientific way and in as much detail as possible. Finally, a lot of work was put into gathering information on and collecting lists of RMT type accounts to be targeted in the operation.During scheduled downtime on June 22nd a little over 6200 paying accounts were banned in one go.
With any subscription-based MMO, persistent support is an absolute necessity. Eve Online's caretakers, however, have gone beyond mere persistence into the category of "bat-shit relentless." I salute them.
Aug 19, 2009
Somewhat surprising
Google Analytics tells me we've had 681 visitors in the last month. 439 of those are returning visitors, and 242 are new. Only about 12% of that traffic came from search engines, meaning that the majority of our hits have come from direct connections and referrals from other sites.
Practically speaking, the numbers are tiny. But they're not bad for a blog made to keep an equally tiny clan of gamers together.
Practically speaking, the numbers are tiny. But they're not bad for a blog made to keep an equally tiny clan of gamers together.
Lights-out for PBBans
PBBans is was a not-for-profit service that allows allowed server admins using PunkBuster to stream their server logs in real time to its website, for the purpose of creating a shared ban list of busted punks (i.e. cheaters). Unfortunately, the popular service is no more.
Via EuroDomination.net:
Via EuroDomination.net:
I hate to have to report this news, but PBBans has closed its doors.Similar services, such as Airdale Ops Network, will have to fill the gap.
Over the past few weeks they have been being hit by a DDOS attack on their server. Today they had another attack and the hosting company would not help them overcome the attack. They would have to move to another hosting company to solve the problem which would cost a lot of money, time, and effort.
The time and effort put in by all the staff members at PBBans has been enormous. But a year or so back, they lost one of the two main coders for the website because Evenbalance would not fix a problem with Punkbuster that allowed for bans to be spoofed. This left MaydaX to code the website and keep it running. Him, along with the founder, Rodeobob, now want to get back to their families and lives, so they are closing the doors to PBBans.
Aug 18, 2009
Wolfenstank
A "Day One" patch usually means a game was rushed out the door, and judging from these release notes, that seems to be the case with Wolfenstein. Given that the multiplayer end offers only three classes and three game modes, you'd think the developer would have had more time to polish what's there. I know: the MP carries over some of the spooky supernatural bits from the singleplayer campaign, but a couple of hazy-green novelties probably won't do much to add staying power to an otherwise mediocre 12-player game.You'd also probably expect that the game's publisher would not shit-can most of the multiplayer development team on the very day the game is released, but that happened, too. So, if you were hoping that the online game would grow over time, you can stop now.
Listen
The visuals in this trailer for Bad Company 2 don't tell me much. The sound design, on the other hand, is phenomenal. I hope the actual game sounds that good.
Aug 17, 2009
Monday Music III - the Holy Trinity
The Rolling Stones - Paint it Black
The Who - Join Together
The Beatles - Elanor Rigby
The Who - Join Together
The Beatles - Elanor Rigby
Xbrick360 failure rate = 54%
From the Consumerist:
The Xbox 360 breaks five times as often as its closest failure-prone competitor, the PlayStation 3, a print edition-only Game Informer survey found.The poorly manufactured, red ring of death-prone console has a 54.2 percent failure rate, compared to 10.6 percent for the PS3 and the Wii's 6.8 percent.
Being the most popular (and thus, the most used) console on the market means that the 360's numbers are inflated, but the raw numbers still suck. That should be of little concern to Microsoft, however:
The most shocking number from the survey — and frightening from a consumer perspective — is only 3.8 percent of Xbox 360 owners said they'd never buy another Xbox because of hardware failure.
It's a shame that PC hardware manufacturers have to compete primarily with each other. But then again, the console guys have had to sell their systems at a loss for the last two generations.
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