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Documentary filmmakers to excavate infamous Atari E.T. landfill
A planned excavation will soon give closure to a long-standing video game urban legend, and may provide new insight into the industry's crash in 1983. Canada-based film production company Fuel Industries has obtained permission from the City Commission of Alamogordo, New Mexico to excavate a landfill containing a large quantity of unsold Atari 2600 games, for the purpose of filming a documentary. Local news outlet KRQE reports that Fuel Industries will have access to the site over the next six months. According to reports in 1983, between 10 and 20 semi-trailer trucks filled with unsold, inoperable, and prototype Atari hardware and software were dispatched from an El Paso, Texas storehouse to a landfill in Alamogordo. The cargo was reportedly dumped, crushed, and encased in concrete. Urban legends state that the film-licensed game E.T. comprised a significant chunk of the dumped material. While E.T.'s gameplay quality is up for debate (some say it's one of the worst games of all time; others claim that it's a misunderstood mediocrity), it was a notoriously poor seller, and played a role in Atari, Inc.'s decision to close and split its assets in 1984. Given the layers of concrete involved, the excavators have a lot of work ahead of them. Recovering these cartridges – or anything recognizable, really – is going to require a lot more than a roadtrip and some shovels.
Engaging the brain: Funcom talks about the immersiveness of story in The Secret World
"No designer could ask for more to draw upon," The Secret World's Joel Bylos says. "This world, our world, is the greatest resource of them all." And so begins a fascinating trip down the dark alleys of storytelling in Funcom's upcoming MMO. In a dev diary posted at MMORPG.com, The Secret World team suggests it's more interesting to set the game in our world instead of in rehashed fantasy lands. By embracing the concept of "everything is true," the writers open the door to every conspiracy theory, every urban legend, and every branch of pseudoscience known to man. "The story is exploration. The story is discovery," Bylos promises. He says that the ultimate goal of the storytelling team is to get players to stop mindlessly clicking and to start engaging the story on a conscious level. This includes investigating events, hunting for clues and solving puzzles. No, this isn't Scooby-Doo Online (although that would be awesome). It's also interesting to note that every character in the game has full voice-over and motion capture as a way to pull you into the story instead of jolt you out of it. Bylos also outlines the different types of missions, which include stealth and infiltration, action, investigation, and story. [Thanks Even!]
Urban Legends of Warcraft: The key, the essence and the ship
Everyone seems to be talking about Cataclysm these days -- and that's not a bad thing, after all the expansion is completely overhauling everything we knew and were familiar with. A lot of the Cataclysm hype surrounds the thought of "finishing" the original game as completely as possible, because many of those beloved quest chains and moments from vanilla will be gone without a trace when the expansion launches. Yet even as these chains are recommended, players forget some of the earliest quests in the game -- mysteries that were never fully explained. There has been a long-running idea since the days of vanilla that there are still quests out there in vanilla that have not been completed. Despite the addition of the Loremaster achievement, there still isn't a single player in this game who has finished "every quest," because some quests have never been completed or even discovered. The thought of undiscovered quests sets people on a flurry of activity, speculation and forum threads that often provided more entertainment than whatever quest they were seeking answers for. One of the biggest mysteries in vanilla WoW didn't involve dragons or legendary swords or epic moments at all -- instead, it all began with a simple, unassuming box located in a quiet glade.
The Urban Legends of Warcraft: Ashbringer
One of the more interesting facets of playing a game as extensive as World of Warcraft are the legends and mysteries surrounding the game, both inside and out. A lot of these legends, mysteries and unsolved puzzles have developed over time into urban legends -- stories that sound just true enough to be plausible, but usually end up being untrue, dead ends or simply unsolved mysteries that were never meant to be puzzled out. Today we'll be talking about a weapon whose origins were so mysterious and carried so many loose ends that it left players in a tizzy for years: Ashbringer. The legend of Ashbringer started when World of Warcraft was originally released. The orange legendary weapon was discovered in the game files by data miners, and the stats and proc on the weapon were truly amazing. At the time, even epic weapons were extremely rare, so seeing something with an orange tag on it was more than a little unique and awe-inspiring. However, other than the datamined weapon, there was no indication of it appearing in game -- that is, until players slowly leveled from launch to their first steps into the Plaguelands.
