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Massively Exclusive: A closer look at WildStar's Cassians
WildStar doesn't shy away from giving its races plenty of personality. The introduction to the Dominion as a whole is given by character Malvolio Portius, and just a few moments of dialogue makes it very clear what sort of person he is. The latest entry on the original site features a mock-interview with the character that at once sheds more light on the character and provides more handy reference points about how Cassian humans think of themselves. Of course, there's more going on behind the scenes, and Malvolio's perspective on things is rather one-sided. (Not to mention smarmy.) To get a little more detail on the Cassian humans from a more neutral perspective, we had a chance to ask lead narrative designer Chad Moore a few questions about the Cassians and the Dominion as a whole. You'll have to wait a little while to learn more about the Draken and the Mechari, but the Cassians alone certainly feature elements that Malvolio won't discuss.
Shocker! The internet is not egalitarian, popular forum posters have it easy
Researchers at the University of Georgia analyzed six years' worth of Usenet posts, and you know what they discovered? Life ain't fair. The most popular two percent of posters who started discussion threads hogged 50 percent of all replies, while everyone else struggled for attention. What made some thread-starters more attractive than others? Thankfully it wasn't rampant flaming. The distinguishing trait was actually how factual they were: only 12 percent of posts by popular posters contained personal opinions or comments. However, posting a bit of news isn't all it takes to win followers. In a related experiment, 200 volunteers were unleashed onto "simulated" discussion forums and their behavior revealed an even more important factor. The slightly flummoxed researchers called it a "preferential attachment", which pulled readers towards posters who already had an excess of followers. In other words, life still ain't fair. For a delightfully factual breakdown of the full results, check out the PR after the break.
Friday Favorite: FolderGlance
FolderGlance 2.55, for Snow Leopard only, is a very useful preference pane that adds a number of additions to the Finder. The simplest and most basic thing it does is to add an expanded contextual menu to any folder when the folder is right (or control, or two-finger) clicked. If there are folders embedded inside the folder you have right-clicked, those folders appear at the top of the display window and can also be right-clicked to inspect their contents. This works for any number of embedded folders. The really neat part, at least for me, is to set custom folders. What this lets you do is to determine folders that you would like to get to right away and denote them as special. Then whenever you right-click, whether in an empty area of your desktop or on any folder, the custom folders appear at the top of your list of folders. This does not replace the functions of the usual contextual menu we've all come to know and love; it expands them. Here's why I love this feature. When I'm writing for TUAW, each post requires a graphic and a link at the very least. Graphics need to be properly formatted, so after adjusting the size, I save the result in a folder called TUAW Pix. This folder is buried about 5 layers into my Documents folder. With FolderGlance, every time I right click, the TUAW Pix folder is right there ready to be opened. Saving the graphics goes from about 8 keystrokes to 2. The preference pane does a bunch of other things as well, but none that I find as useful as the feature detailed above. For the record, here is the feature list: Moving, copying and making aliases of the currently selected files in a folder you browse to Control-free popups: Open the contextual menu without holding down the control-key or using a two-button mouse In-menu preview of arbitrary files Opening files with an application different than the default by using an "Open with..." menu you can tailor to suit your own taste Changing the font size used in contextual menus Browsing into package contents Customizable sorting and customizable display of hidden files and folders. The preference pane gets updated fairly frequently, and in that process, you are asked to force-quit and reload the Finder to make the new version take effect. For me, this doesn't seem to work. I need to either restart or log out and back in for the change to take effect. FolderGlance 2.55 costs US$20 for a license. This is expensive and I'm sure that cheaper alternatives are around, but this, in my workflow, has become an extension of the Finder, and something that I feel should be built into the OS. I use it constantly. You should note that if you are running anything under OS 10.6, there are older versions available.
The Legendary Sisterhood shakes up Sentinels
The guys over at the Legendary Heroes podcast wanted to form a guild to play with their fans, but they didn't want to actually make it serious-- they figured that by including everyone, they'd end up with some people who were fun to play with, but weren't necessarily the best players. So instead, they formed a guild. And it's been an interesting experiment-- kind of an anti-RP RP guild.They're formed a guild called "The Legendary Sisterhood" over on Sentinels' Horde side-- it consists only of Blood Elf female mages and priests. It's a weird cross between a cult, a party, and a griefer guild-- the denizens of Sentinels have reacted to their actions with the expected confusion. We only know there are rules: every member of the guild must have a name that starts with "Sister" (as in Sisteramy), and there is a hierarchy within the guild, topped by a dark and mysterious Queen. It's an RP guild for non-RPers-- there are weird rituals, various attacks on opposite faction capital cities, and just general mayhem. In short, it sounds awfully fun.I'm not a huge fan of RP-ing (our own David Bowers knows much more about it than I do), but I'm not sure this is RPing or not-- they're just having fun with an old fantasy mechanic of the secret society and playing together in a way that doesn't necessarily require reaching the endgame. The guild is the character in this case, not the players themselves.[Thanks, Mark!](Post updated after the jump)
