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The Anvil of Crom: What's going on
Funcom's Age of Conan is a title that's changed quite a bit over the two-plus years it's been on the MMORPG market. Whether you're talking about the recent Rise of the Godslayer expansion, the game-changing 1.05 update, or the hundreds of smaller tweaks, balances, class revamps, and content additions that Hyboria has seen since 2008, there's never been a shortage of things to discuss. Through it all, AoC die-hards have debated, pleaded, flamed, and in some cases, constructively discussed the merits of the title in one primary place: the official forums. Owing to its existence as a niche title with a smallish population, AoC doesn't feature huge third-party fansites like EQ2Flames, AionSource, or any of the legions of communities that have sprung up around World of Warcraft. No, all the Hyborian meta-gaming action is centralized in one spot, and in this week's Anvil of Crom, we're going to highlight and discuss some of the more noteworthy threads that you may have missed over the last couple of weeks (including a definitive answer from Craig Morrison as to the size of the game's development team). Flip past the cut for more.
Lanyu LY-EB01 is world's cheapest laptop with built-in obsolescence
Step aside, World's Cheapest Laptop, Lanyu of China just undercut you -- and the magical $100 barrier -- with the 666 Yuan ($98) LY-EB01. This marketing marvel might have a processor slower than most netbooks' FSB at 266MHz, and its 128MB of RAM might spontaneously combust if you even type the word Vista into it, but it is, technically, a laptop. And you can totally store, like, a few hundred Word files on the 2GB flash drive. Having played around with the previous champ of the 'cheap 'n useless' weight class, we must at least congratulate Lanyu on a solid looking construction, and hey, apparently there's a chance for a release outside China. Aren't you excited? [Via Cloned in China]
Spore developer rants on Wii
Chris Hecker didn't pull any punches at GDC's "Game Publisher's Rant" session. The Maxis developer began his "Fear of a Wii Planet" diatribe by declaring, "The Wii is a piece of sh*t."He went on to describe the console as being vastly underpowered, citing low graphical standards and an inability to process complicated AI. According to Hecker's exaggerations, "The way you manufacture a Wii is you take two GameCubes and duct tape." As if that wasn't already enough to break a fanboy's heart, he called on Nintendo to "make a console that doesn't suck ass." His complaints weren't limited to hardware gripes -- he also criticized Nintendo for not pushing games as an art form. Maybe he hasn't seen Electroplankton or the bit Generations games?Hecker's rants from previous years were just as brutally harsh on Sony and Microsoft, but we're sure that will do little to tame the wrath of offended gamers. Bringing Spore to the DS might have earned him enough good will to make it out of the session unharmed, but he might want to avoid walking around GDC alone at night until this cools down.
