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Vader Visits The Troops And Other Tales
Bungie will be making a lot of changes at the home office, doubling their staff to ramp up for Halo 3. Changes for fans of the City of Heroes comic are coming as well, as NCSoft announced early this week that they were signing Top Cow publishing to take over the book. There will be plenty of announcements next week at the Game Developer's Conference, where Nintendo will be discussing their plans for Network gaming. MMOGs are, of course, the most networked of games and there is lots of MMO-related news to share this week. Final Fantasy XI players have a new Vana'diel Tribune to peruse, and if you'd like to share some stories the folks over at videogamestudies.com are interested in your characters. Not a new story, but one worth sharing is the republishing of The Big Scam. The Eve Online tale of real-life scammery and backstabbery is well worth a read. Sharing online tales is fun, and 1up.com has excellent journals about their online adventures. Warcraft Stories, My Life in Vana'diel, Memoirs of an Urban Vigilante, and Hooked on Evercrack were all updated this week. Finally, Corpnews has a bright note from the world of Star Wars Galaxies to share as Lord Vader took some time to visit the troops in the field. Update: 03/07 17:18 GMT by Z : As CapeMonkey pointed out, I had the wrong barnyard animal in talking about the CoH Comic.
...Really should be taken with a grain of salt. While a great piece of writing, its factual content is questionable. Perhaps it has accidentaly created a new genre: gonzo games journalism, just as its elder counterpart gonzo journalism split from the new journalism movement.
Launched this week was the free art project LessShift which allows anyone to run a Planeshift server that users can legally connect to (the Planeshift art license prohibits players from connecting to "non-official" servers with official art). We're currently in need of artists with 3ds max skills and/or Blender experts who can revive the Blender -> CS export tools. 2d artists, musicians and Quake/Halflife mappers are also needed.
All contributed art must be in the public domain or under a public domain compatible license (eg, x11, creative commons, GPL). Everyone is welcome to use the art bundle for any purpose (including developing other MMORPGs).
How we know is more important than what we know.
It doesn't matter if it's true.
Despite a few articles claiming the article is gaming "journalism," nowhere in the document does it ever claim to be "journalism." Rather it's important because it is one of the first widely read MMORPG folk tales, ala Bunyan or Ichabob Crane. It meets the criteria of a folk story: like authors of all folk stories, this writer knew enough about the subject matter to make it sound plausible. Secondly, he (or she?) is addressing several major concerns with the game. For example, the studio's involvement is portrayed as hurting the honest players in the game. The player starts out wanting to play honestly, but then discovers that it is nearly impossible to do so. "The Big Scam" also paints the biggest power players in the game as arrogant and aggressive, but easily duped. And finally, it shows just how easy people think it is to scam innocent players in the game.
There's a lot of themes running through this story, and whether the actual facts are true or not isn't what makes this important. The issues the article addresses - and the resulting discontentment - are true, and that's why this is an important document. Plus, it's funny as hell.
Bungie lost most of their hard core fans years ago when they abandoned what could have been a revolutionary FPS for the Macintosh, only to bring it out 4 years later for the Xbox. By that time people had tasted Tribes (which Halo can't compete with on any level). I doubt Halo 2 or Halo 3 will even come out for the Mac, as hardly anybody was interested in buying it when it finally did come out for the Mac, many years too late.
That's OK, though, because Halo lacks the depth and plot that the earlier Bungie titles had. It's just a cheap 3D shooter, somewhere between UT and Tribes (the first one).
Sure, focus on Vader visiting the troops... I was in the town of Anchorhead on Tattooine when Princess Leia arrived to rally the rebel forces stationed there. Where's that press coverage?
The only thing I hate more than hypocrites are people who hate hypocrites.
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Creative Demolition
I heard around SWG forums (trying to find an opinion on if its worth playing now) that both Rebel VIPs and Imperial VIPs were going to cities "rallying the troops." I read Leia stopped by a city somewheres and also gave a "speech".
No sig for you!!
It's not Dark Horse taking over the City of Heroes comic, it's Top Cow. Wrong farm animal!
For a second there, when I very first read "Vader Visits The Troops" I thought, oh my god, slashdot really went overboard with their left leaning stance.
I really thought that "Lord Vader took some time to visit the troops in the field" meant that George Lucas had stopped by SOE and didn't bother clicking on the link. When I saw the post linking to a dozen photos of the event I thought it was kind of weird why someone would take that many pictures of George Lucas.
Of course, who knows - maybe the Darth Vader that visited in-game was George Lucas?
"Lord Vader took some time to visit the troops in the field. .."
Let me know when slave Leah shows up. Raarrrrrr.
Just for fun, look at the shadow of the Imperial Shuttle in this screenie.
** A Sketch a Week **
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When I read "Darth Vader", I instinctively think Star Wars. But when I read only "Vader", somehow, I just can't help but think of Vader (Leon White) first.
This is old news. Lord Vader visited the troops something like two thanksgivings ago!
I think the plan was actually a revolutionary 3rd person shooter/RTS hybrid for Macintosh. And yeah, Microsoft really blew that one when they sucked Bungie's soul out through a faulty X-BOX power cable.
Against stupidity the Gods themselves contend in vain.
Hmmmmmmmmmmm. Bitter are we?
FYI - um Tribes was not a gigantic hit. Yeah, I used to play the first iteration, but Tribes is notoriously difficult to pick up and start playing unless you are willing to get your ass handed to you for awhile.
I agree that Halo is pretty generic and boring - at least to the average computer gamer. As far as consoles go, Halo was a little less common and introduced lots of people to online gaming.
Bungie's sell out was arguably a loss for computer gamers but a boon for console gamers.
Sometimes my arms bend back.
I just read it and having played eve-online, it's plausible, and made me remember some of what playing it felt like. Boring mining, anger at being killed for no reason, and the strange feeling that you would cheat anyone, just for a challenge.
Thanks for putting on the feedbag. Thanks for going all out. Thanks for showing me your Swiss Army knife.