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HL2's Alyx as Playable Character, MMOG Updates, Women in Games Survey
A good week for MMOG gamers, as Star Wars Galaxies Patch 13.0 goes into effect, revamping the Galactic Civil War and making way for the Combat Upgrade. World of Warcraft players, likewise, should be happy to learn about future game developments in upcoming patches. There are a lot of folks in that last category, as Blizzard stated this week that they've sold more than 800,000 copies of WoW, making Warcraft the largest U.S. based MMOG. If you're interested in learning more about MMOG stats, SirBruce's mmogchart.com has recently been updated with new information. Speaking of learning, registration will begin soon for the academically inclined Games+Learning+Society conference to be held in Madison, Wisconsin. If the concept intrigues you there are only 200 passes to go around, so you'd best sign up early. Gamespot's weekly Rumor Control article certainly intrigues, and this week states that Half-Life 2's Alyx is likely to be a playable character in an upcoming expansion to the hit game. A female protagonist would be a nice change of pace. Women in games in general are a good thing, and GameGirlAdvance has a lengthy survey for women gamers and women in the games industry to fill out.
She was the best thing to look at in Half-Life 2, even though see needed more "physics" in some areas.
now rumor control turns into rumor spread.
""Despite the rumors, Valve has not announced any plans for a Half-Life 2 expansion." That said, given that the shooter was the top-selling PC game of 2004 and Valve has already expanded it with a Deathmatch mode, it's likely only a matter of time before it gets an expansion. And given the appearance of an "Alyx Gun" in the game's development kit and game developers' propensity for foxy female leads, Alyx would be a very plausible protagonist indeed."
so.. they got information stating otherwise but they still say that it's probably true, and that you'll probably play alyx.
which doesn't matter you know. with the style of hl2 the character won't speak and only place where you might get a look at her is the mirrors. so if you think alyx is sexy you'd better hope that she's NOT the main character.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
...and judging from Half-Life 2's late, heavily-delayed release, even if they had plans it would take quite a while. I'm not holding my breath.
You can hold down the "B" button for continuous firing.
I think it's great to have a few quickies rather than one full thing (no phun intended).
It is much nicer to browse through 20 little interesting and concise nit bits than one big story.
Mouse powered Chips, Open source Processors and Lego
Alyx being the protagonist wouldn't be the first time Valve has put a female into a protagonist role. In the PS2 version of Half-Life, the Co-op mission had both players as females.
Frink: Nice try floyd, but you were designed for scrubbing, and scrubbing is what you shall do.
A female protagonist would be a nice change of pace.
What are you talking about? Games frequently have female protagonists these days.
The galactic war new system looks nice, might be a good reason to give it another chance. Can any SWG player tell me if the galactic war is actually fun? The last time I played, I didn't feel like I was in the middle of a galatic war *at all*. Did it change?
perception is reality
a la City of heroes. Side kicking (aka the ability to change one's level to play with friends that are at a lower or higher level) is one of the better invasions in City of heroes and I'm glad to see it is working it's way into other games (plus it will give eq2 players who power leveled to 50 the chance to go back and see what all they missed)
s sa ge?board.id=pround&message.id=1506
http://eqiiforums.station.sony.com/eq2/board/me
According to the British edition of PC Gamer magazine, Valve's Doug Lombardi is quoted as saying, "At the moment we're working on a game where you play as Alyx and her well-known robot dog."
Perhaps they're working on a completely different game, such as that side-scrolling game based on Half-Life. Codename: Gordon wasn't it?
No one says it has to be part of a Half-Life 2 expansion.
If we look at the first HL expansion packs, we had one featuring a soldier and one featuring Barney. Even though the original Blue Shift expansion pack started life as headed for the Dreamcast, I would think that a Barney expansion pack would make sense for HL2. While an Alyx one would make sense with how she is used in the game, might there be a chance that there would be an expansion pack that follows the spirit of Opposing Force and features a soldier?
http://www.popularculturegaming.com -- my blog about the culture of videogame players
You should give No One Lives Forever and NOLF 2: A Spy in H.A.R.M.'s Way a try. These are fun, award-winning games featuring a female lead in a James Bond/Austin Powers series of super-spy adventures.
I am the very model of a modern major general!
it's the first quicky in 3 years
It's nice to see the new figures on World of Warcraft bump it out of the traditional MMORPG chart and into the "truely massive" chart. Now I can finally put those Final Fuckfest XI whiners in their place when they try and claim it as "most popular MMORPG" using that chart. Well, except I can't, because it's been bumped off the chart...
I really appreciate the work SirBruce does on that chart. I've gone looking for figures and the gaming companies make it damned hard to figure out unless they're actively on top. Square-Penix (I swear that was a typo, but it's too good to fix) hasn't updated the figures for almost eight months now. It's really weird, since they had a new release in a new area since then, you'd think they'd be trumpetting new players - but no. I'm wondering how many accounts they lost - I'll bet it's enough to drop them even further down the list.
If Final Fuckfest XI manages to drop below EverQuest, I'm going to laugh SO hard. SOE may suck, but they're nothing compared to the massive suckage that is Square's customer disservice. If you go away for three months, POOF! Kiss your characters good buy. Not even SOE is dumb enough to pull that shit. (Then there's the "1 char to an account" crap that SOE won't do but Square got away with.)
It really was saddening to see FFXI be the "number 1" US MMORPG. I'm really glad to see it finally get its come-uppance from the far, far superior World of Warcraft. It managed to hit double the number of FFXI peak subscribers in three months. Congrats, Blizzard!
I think WoW needs to get their priorities straight. I am browsing Slashdot because I am looking at a 30 minute line to get into my server. Just let people transfer servers, increase their capacity, just do SOMETHING. All of that great content and what not doesn't do me any good if I can't even log in.
If you are looking for an alternative to WoW, try rose online, it may look like a simple kiddy mmorpg, but believe it or not, but it has economics involved, supply and demand, if a certain town is running out of a certain material, then the price for that material goes up. there is a possibility of taking over a world or all seven (there are seven worlds), therefore giving you power to change many aspects of the game, as a player. unfortunately it is still in BETA testing, you can download it at www.roseon.com (its around 350mg, it has to update weekly aswell, around another 350mg, so expect a long wait when updating) for now, the game is free, i believe eventually it will be a pay-to-play game, but for now it is an excellent alterative to WoW for those who do not wish to pay. for more information (very interesting, especially the "taking over the world" thing) goto http://www.roseon.com
Anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job. - HHGTTG
I eagerly await the "Plot" and "Story" expansion packs for Half-Life 2.
insightful
I think WoW needs to get their priorities straight. I am browsing Slashdot because I am looking at a 30 minute line to get into my server. Just let people transfer servers, increase their capacity, just do SOMETHING. All of that great content and what not doesn't do me any good if I can't even log in.
Agreed, my server is medium pop and it's been borked for the past week. All kinds of wierd shit has been happening since the last patch they made to 'fix' Auction House lag. I think their code introduced a new bug. People were having problems like all the NPC's dissapearing, corpses disappearing, etc.
It looks like they are going to put in the honor system as well, that will lead to nothing but low level players griefing the high level players. PvP is healthy on my PvP server, and I don't see the need to tinker with it. Yes, I have been ganked a few times by high level characters, but that is the fun of the game. If anything they should take out the 'automatically miss if you are 5 levels lower' code in PvP, so low level characters could zerg a high level character and kill him.
The Hero classes should be put in sooner rather than later. Just making another instance isn't going to appease the horde of people that are around level 30-40 and will be at 60 soon (ie the ones who got the game around xmas and actually have day jobs/school).
The other stuff is all icing on the cake, they should focus on making the servers stable before worrying about appeasing the carebears and the whiners.
The episode of G4TV.com (dumb show name) airing right now has Hal Robins the voice of Dr. Kliener as a guest (and the lady who did Alyx's voice on the phone.) One of the hosts asked about the exspansion pack and while Alyx hadn't heard anything, Hal (who is super weird) says that he has been asked to do more voicework for Valve.
Sounds confirmed to me.
when Push Comes to Shove
Maybe this is what's used for the other games where you get glimpses of Freeman on trams and running into portals?
This sig has absolutely no significance and serves only to take up screen space and waste the time of the reader.