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Ask Massively: The next internet fad will be tires edition
Tires are round bits of rubber that are placed upon the wheels of vehicles in order to facilitate spinning or something. Also, sometimes your parents might string some rope around one because they're too cheap and lazy to buy you a decent swingset. Anyhow, the next thing on the internet will be tires. I'm calling it right now. Don't look at me like that. We're talking about the same people who made Rebecca Black and Happy Cat famous. Just... tires. Rolling or... whatever. It's time for Ask Massively this week, as you could probably tell from the introduction about half a step away from a schizophrenic rant. This week, we've got a question about scaling instance difficulty and a couple of questions from our forums, none of which has anything to do with tires. If you'd like to ask a tire-related question, leave one in the comments or mail it along to ask@massively.com. I guess I can answer MMO questions, too.
BioWare talks environmental polish in The Old Republic, answers class-related questions
Ever wondered what "polish" entails when it comes to an MMORPG? The word is tossed about on forums often enough, and just as often, newly released titles are lambasted by gamers who feel that polish is severely lacking in some form or fashion. Today's Star Wars: The Old Republic update goes behind the scenes at the Jedi dream factory to give readers an inside scoop on how the developers at BioWare define polish and how the team is implementing it into TOR. Senior environment artist Robby Lamb is our guide, and he walks us through the various stages of the art asset creation process, noting the various opportunities to polish and perfect along the way. Also new this week is a TOR Community Q&A with senior designer William Wallace (no, not that one) in which a smattering of class-related questions are summoned from the depths of TOR's pre-release fan community and subsequently answered at length. Check out all the details on the official TOR website.
Nu-Screen HD polishes your screen, doesn't moisturize your lips
If you've ever been concerned about fingerprint smudges compromising your smartphone's password, this might just be a viable solution. Nu-Screen, a company little known around these parts, has launched the Nu-Screen HD polish stick which promises to leave a "slippery smooth, non-greasy surface" on your screen. How certain are we that smearing this mystery substance on your device will prevent smudges? Well, let's just say we'd rather pat some baby powder onto our hands. But hey, if you're willing to give this a go, hit up the source link to purchase the $26 jank stick -- just make sure not to confuse this with your cherry ChapStick.
Choose My Adventure: Singing the skill grind blues
Well, here we are folks, smack dab in the middle of our Darkfall run for Choose My Adventure. With three weeks down and three weeks to go, I have to be honest: I feel pressed for time. There's so much to see and do in this game that six weeks simply isn't enough to really do it justice (to say nothing of the fact that it's not nearly enough time to build a competitive character in terms of the skill grind). In any event, I'll do what I can to give you an accurate read on the game, and as my first couple of columns have admittedly erred on the side of fresh-faced enjoyment, today's entry will touch on a few of the game's less than savory aspects. In addition to that, I'll recap a few of my gameplay highlights from the past week. Join me after the cut for a look at my Darkfall present and future as well as a video diary of my adventures thus far.
Epic new Rift video precedes tomorrow's beta test opening
If there's one MMO on the horizon that has everyone excited, it's Rift. Created by Trion Worlds, Rift promises to be the next big AAA launch title and has been drawing its share of attention from players. The game's closed beta begins tomorrow, and Trion has been giving out beta keys in preparation. Some Rift fans were able to grab limited beta keys that give access to several beta events, while others were lucky enough to secure an access-all-areas VIP beta key. Here at Massively, our 500 VIP keys disappeared in record time. For those of you who missed the chance to get in on the Rift beta, you can still sign up at the Rift website for a chance to get in. Rift is being marketed as a fully complete, next-gen MMO. But those are just marketing buzzwords, right? Guess again! In this new video (after the cut below), the Trion team has taken the bold step of defining what exactly those terms mean in a very practical context. Rift is promised to be a highly polished MMO right from launch, with none of those rough edges we've come to expect from new titles. Rather than follow the standard MMO formula wherein monsters are forever bound to respawn and walk around within a small area, Rift aims to create a truly dynamic game world. The demonic rifts that open randomly in the world will radically alter not just the look of the land but also the gameplay of nearby areas. Leave a rift unchecked for too long and you'll soon find they've set up camp and organised an invasion of the local area. If this new video doesn't make you excited for Rift and the future potential of the MMO genre, I don't know what will. Skip past the cut to watch the new Rift beta video in full HD.
Brasso Gadget Care polish review
At Engadget, we tend not to make a big fuss about cleaning products, but this one deserves a little shout-out: Brasso, a well-established metal polish brand in good ol' Blighty, is pushing out its Gadget Care polish gel to the masses tomorrow. What really caught our attention was the fact that this will be Brasso's first new product for a whopping 110 years, but of course, at the end of the day it's all about whether the polish does what it says on the bottle, and whether it'll leave your gadgets' paintwork unharmed. The selling point's simple: not only does this gel clean your gadgets, but it also leaves a layer of silicone that's supposedly both anti-static (or dust-hating) and smear-preventing. Well, 'tis certainly a very bold claim, so join us after the break to see if this new Brasso's worth your money.%Gallery-104531%
AppWall screensaver brings the App Wall to your Mac
Even though I haven't actually seen it in person, I've been a big fan of Apple's App Wall at WWDC every year; they've hooked up a bunch of servers and Mac pros in order to create an animated set of App Store icons that shows real-time purchases in a very visual way. Now, I can have a little piece of the App Wall on my Mac at home; a Polish developer named iApp has created an AppWall screensaver that's now available for a free download. We got in touch with App's Peter Tuszynski who confirmed that, while it doesn't work exactly like the official App Wall (it won't show you real-time purchases), the screensaver really does pull icons from top free or top paid apps by way of an option choice, and then it displays those icons on an ever-changing screensaver display. It's very cool. I downloaded it on my MacBook, and while the saver does take a little while to load up (it has to pull in all of those icons every time it starts up), it's a reasonable facsimile of Apple's official display. And you don't even have to buy tickets to San Francisco to see it! The screensaver is available for free right now. If the site's being hammered, just give it some time to recover from the traffic. There are also icons on the site that hint that Apple will bring this to the iPhone and iPad "soon," so we'll stay tuned and see what they've got planned.
The Daily Grind: How important are options?
Saying that a game is linear is almost a dirty word in the field of games, at least when it comes to RPGs and their close genre relatives. The advent of games that allow you to decide whether to trek through the Desert of Certain Doom or the Forest of Inevitable Demise has spoiled us a bit -- we expect to have a choice. MMOs are hardly exempt, and in some ways even worse off, with players who want to choose which quests they do, which abilities they learn, and what their character likes in a pie. Of course, by the same token, it's better to have one path that's fleshed-out and interesting than a half-dozen with hardly any expansion to them, whether it's a path to the level cap or just a chain of learning abilities. So the question is, how important is the power of choice? When leveling, would you prefer variety of zones without as much quality to each area, or a full dint of quality in far fewer different places? Do you want your characters to learn anything even if there's not much to learn, or do you prefer a single path that has been expertly balanced?
Why we don't get more innovative games
Innovation is as often as not used as a blank check when asked why MMOs aren't as good as they could be. While the sentiment isn't constant, it's recurring: a vague sense that something isn't there that ought to be. Often, the answer thrown around is that we need innovative games -- but when the people hollering for them are asked to explain what they mean, usually they shuffle, stare at their feet, and reply "well, these would go to 11." We want something new, but we're not sure what, and we're not sure why we aren't getting it. Brian "Psychochild" Green recently wrote up a post on the problems of innovation in MMOs, as well as several reasons we don't tend to get a great deal of it. In short, there are two main reasons. Innovation is risky, which makes a company more and more wary of investing money in a game that might not make any of it back. It also goes directly against another virtue that we look for in our games: polish. By its very definition, an innovative game can't be polished, since there's not as much precedent for refining systems. It's hard to summarize the full essay in a few sentences, however, as it covers a lot of ground and a wide variety of games. If you're interested in why it seems like there's little new under the MMO sun, you could do worse than reading the full thing through.
Microsoft sucks at Photoshop
Officially. Update: Microsoft tells CNET, "We are looking into the details of this situation. We apologize and are in the process of pulling down the [Polish] image." Update 2: And... it's down. The un-shopped image is now up on the Polish site, although whatever harried graphics monkey that got the call to fix it didn't do so well lining up the text box. At least that's one mistake that won't get you fired though, right? [Thanks, David and Matt W] Read - Microsoft's English site Read - Microsoft's Polish site
The purpose of Achievements, and how it's changed over time
Moonglade has a good post up about the pros and cons of achievements. Nowadays, achievements are everywhere, but when they were introduced to the game a while ago, they were seen as a great way for Blizzard to integrate an idea that had really taken off on Xbox Live (and that an impending competing MMO, Warhammer Online, was implementing for themselves). They were mostly seen as a benefit for the solo player -- even if you hit level 80 and nabbed some awesome gear, there'd be some optional fun for you to have in the future.Since then, achievements have changed quite a bit -- I'd argue that they're actually more used in groups than in solo play, as raids check players for achievements when inviting them, and guilds use achievements to rate where their proficiency lies. There are certainly still lots of things for solo players to do (every holiday, achievements come to the forefront again), but titles and mounts have become the main goals there, not just optional points. As Moonglade says, instancing and checking up on what players have done seem to have become the main point of achievements. What was just a bragging competition on Xbox Live has transitioned to a real yardstick in terms of what a player focuses on in game and what they've done so far.Is that bad? I don't think so -- Blizzard has done with achievements what they've done brilliantly with all of the other features of their games: borrow them, polish them, and then make them better. If you look through that old thread, most of the talk was about achievements pushing people to keep playing the game, and that happened, but I think one thing Blizzard has done is use achievements as a way to see what people have done so far as well: what instances have you run, what quests have you completed, what titles do you have already? There's lots more value to achievements than what any of us originally envisioned.
Convertbot updated to 1.1, adds more units to convert
I haven't had much use for Tapbots' Weightbot, even though I actually am currently watching my weight, but I really appreciate the look and feel of the program -- it's one of the most polished apps on the App Store. And Convertbot is no different -- while the actual situations where I need to convert units are pretty few and far between, the app is just so intuitive and polished that you look for ways to use it, from the stylistic user interface to the little beeps and clinks that make the buttons feel as tactile as they can on the iPhone's touchscreen.And now there's even more opportunities to use the app: with the newest version 1.1, out now in the App Store, you can convert more than 100 different units, everything from angles to lengths to cooking volumes to even speed, time, and work (I can't remember the last time I had to convert BTUs to Joules -- high school? -- but this app can do it). At just 99 cents, it's definitely worth trying out, if you're a fan of quality iPhone apps at all. I kind of wish Tapbots would aim a little higher, but then again, this is kind of their thing: taking really simple apps and polishing the heck out of them until they shine way past their basic functions. It would be interesting, though, to see what they could do with a bigger concept.
Paragus' Darkfall beta review: Not your grandma's MMORPG
One of the very first Darkfall beta reviews we found came up only moments after the NDA dropped. Paragus, co-leader of the Inquisition guild and longtime MMORPG fanatic, shared his thoughts on the game over at MMOCrunch.com. It's quite a lengthy read and covers areas of the game such as character creation, user interface, the world, characters and animations, combat, quests, PvE, the alignment system, and corpse-looting.One commentor pointed out a few things the review was missing, including mounts, ships, mount and ship combat, class/skill balance, bugs, missing features, and the player-run economy. Still, we found it to be a very good overview of the game. Paragus suggests that Darkfall is not going to have mass market appeal, however, fans of old-school PvP MMOs like Ultima Online and Asheron's Call should find the game quite entertaining. Overall, he feels that while Darkfall may be a little rough around the edges, it features enough of a unique experience to be worth it. Paragus is also taking questions, so feel free to leave comments on his review.If you'd like a second opinion, why not check out what Massively's very own Colin Brennan has to say about his hands-on Darkfall experience? Also, share your thoughts on whether or not you plan to purchase Darkfall in our Daily Grind.
Tigole lists informal patch notes for the next stage of the beta
Tigole has been joking around on the forums with a vengeance today (did you know that Northrend was originally going to be called "Blizzneyland"?), but he did provide us with a quick preview of all the patch changes for the next beta build coming up. Heroics, he says, have been retuned, and Blizzard is especially looking for feedback on endgame raid instances like Icecrown. Dalaran has gotten a little more "polish" (that's the shiny kind, not that there are more people there from Poland), and there will hopefully be a glyph vendor in soon to let players try out new glyphs of all kinds. Finally, he says performance updates have started, and that's a good sign that Blizzard is working on getting towards the final stages of the expansion development -- sounds like most of the early zones and items are as done as they're going to get.He also, of course, says that there are class changes in the patch, with one of the most insightful notes we've seen yet: "You won't like the ones made to your own class but you'll think the changes made to the 9 other classes are all overpowered." It's true. If only all of the other patch notes could be so incredibly clear to players.
Orange says Polish iPhone 3G customers weren't paid actors
Folks, be honest with us here -- did you really expect Orange and / or Apple to say anything other than this? Amidst reports that iPhone 3G line sitters at Polish Orange stores were actually paid to be there, the carrier has shot back in order to defend its dignity. In an e-mail reply to an Ad Age inquiry on the matter, a spokeswoman proclaimed that as "part of the excitement around the launch of the iPhone, some of [Orange's] team has been joining customers outside [of the] shops." She also noted that "sales were strong" and that Orange "was happy," though actual numbers were not revealed. So there you have it, now make of it what you will.[Image courtesy of AppleBlog]
Introducing Engadget Poland!
Whoa, hard to believe its been three years since the last internationalized version of Engadget launched, but we're back and have a number of new sites in the pipeline -- kicking off with Engadget in Polish!Why Polish, you ask? Well, besides the fact that we had some amazing talent waiting in the wings to blow it out, it's also a smaller (dare we say underserved?) market to soft-launch in that allows us to work out the kinks as we prepare to do even more international versions of Engadget in the coming weeks and months.So if Polish isn't your bag, just hang tight, you'll be seeing even more localized Engadgets soon enough. And if it is, head on over and welcome our Polish team to the fold!
Poland's Aster adds seven HD channels
There's been quite a bit of HD action in Poland of late, but all has been quiet on the Aster front -- until now. The nation's fourth largest operator has just announced a trio of packages that will deliver up to seven high-definition channels to those who cough up the requisite coin. For starters, we've got the HDPack (20 Polish z??oty; $9.38 per month), which contains TVN HD, Discovery HD, History HD, Eurosport HD and Luxe TV HD. Next up is Discovery HD all by its lonesome and the Canal+ HD tier, which includes Canal+ Sport HD and Canal+ Film HD. Each of those sets will demand 6 Polish z??oty ($2.82) per month. For anyone parked in Warsaw, chime in and let us know how the new offerings look.
ITI Neovision's N brings 1080i porn-on-demand to Poland
Hold onto your trousers folks, as ITI Neovision's quizzically named N is bringing HD porn to Polish subscribers anytime they want. The service, which is thought to be the first of its kind in Europe, enables customers to select, purchase and view 1080i XXX-rated titles on-demand. According to a local, the first two flicks to surface are Sensual Dolls and Born To Be Sexy, both of which sound like surefire winners if that's what you're into. No word on how pricey each selection will be, but feel free to test the service out and let us know how it shapes up if you're so bold.[Thanks, Arsenal]
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PotBS patch 1.5 is looming over of the horizon
Pirates of the Burning Sea has seen a few big changes since the game released. The latest addition to the fleet will be new pirate careers in patch 1.4. So what is coming up after buccaneers make their appearance on the high seas? A swabbing of the poop deck to be precise! All that combat and ship destruction leaves plenty of debris around that needs to be picked up. Patch 1.5 is going to do just that.The details were revealed through an interview with Ten Ton Hammer. According to Flying Lab producer Joe Ludwig, the team is "spending the entire month working on nothing but polish." The coffee is brewing at their offices as the entire team focuses on getting the game to a point where it appears just the way they want it. Some pesky annoyances players often report should be getting a swift kick off the plank as well. Those are, of course, not the only things coming in the next update.Joe declares that since users do pay a monthly fee, the team is committed to giving them both polish and new content. That content will be appearing as a second epic mission. Joe says it will be something based on the supernatural, but what exactly this means is not made clear. What is clear is that everyone from the lead developers to the interns are going to be cleaning up the world of Pirates of the Burning Sea for the benefit of swashbucklers everywhere.
Gingerbread stirs up new shooter with South American mythos
A new Polish outfit -- so new in fact that it doesn't seem to even have a website yet -- has announced development of a new first/third person shooter for the Xbox 360 and PC called The Protector, which promises the unorthodox mix of terrorism and Aztec lore. Developed by upstart Gingerbread Studios, the game's playable characters similarly break from convention, lacing players up in the boots of former lovers Jennifer Guile and Jonathan Kane, a US archaeologist and British mercenary.Even so, their relationship won't just be used to thicken the sexual tension ala Melrose Place. Instead, the devs note that each will work to keep an ancient Aztec weapon out of the hands of terrorists using different skills, with archaeologist Guile sneaking around stealthily while Kane sprays bad guys with bullets in "searing, tactical shooting." The game, which has not yet been given a release date, won't just have the pair going up against terrorists, but also "mythical Aztec creatures" as well, giving us all the reason we need to keep an eye on The Protector in the months to come.[Via Big Download] Gallery: The Protector
