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Vader Visits The Troops And Other Tales

Posted by Zonk on from the a-day-long-remembered dept.

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.

3 of 41 comments (clear)

  1. The Big Scam... by sailforsingapore · · Score: 3, Interesting

    ...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.

    1. Re:The Big Scam... by C0rinthian · · Score: 2, Interesting

      While some of the small details are questionable in "The big scam" I don't think it's fake. I've played Eve since a month after release. Those kinds of scams DO happen.

      Older players may remember the Morbor investment scheme which ripped off over 300 players. Now THAT was entertainment!

  2. The Big Scam is the First Great MMORPG Folk Story by superultra · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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.