Brenda Holloway
Articles by Brenda Holloway
The Bling Gnome in action!
The Bling Gnome will save your ass. Not THAT kind of ass! The kind of ass you ride on -- it won't have to carry you back to town. So you'll be saving it from all that hard work of carting your loot back and forth. Because, really, in he greater scheme of things, who wants trash loot anyway? Players who buy the retail box version of soon-to-be launched satirical fantasy action-adventure MMO, Dungeon Runners, will wonder how they ever did without their very own Bling Gnome to eat up all the trash loot and excrete creamy, golden goodness. After viewing this bling-filled teaser for the Diminutive Master of Bling, you'll wonder how you ever lived life without it. Real life. Heck, there's no need to even go to the store for one, when we're giving them away for free! How's that again? Bling Gnomes for FREE? Watch the clip and sign the slip. Word.
Is there a city of hobos in your cellar?
The world's most popular stick-figure meat-trading MMO, Kingdom of Loathing, takes a bold step into history with the release of its new hardcore raid expansion, Hobopolis. Where before, your interactions with other people were limited to trading barbed quips in perfectly formed haiku, or robbing their camps when you felt pretty sure the owners might be away, now you can gather to explore the subterranean metropolis of Hobopolis, the City of Hobos.Seal Clubbers, Disco Bandits, Accordion Thieves and all the other peoples of KoL are now able to come together to take on challenges that are too much for any one Pastamancer to meet. Such are the dangers when clan leaders decide unwisely to build basements in their clan hall, and then wonder what lies behind that door ... that smelly door.Kingdom of Loathing is a free-to-play, browser-based MMO that doesn't require Flash or special clients or anything, really, but a sense of humor, a taste for puns, and a desire for some surprisingly deep gameplay.
Gaming's best kept secret: World of Warcraft
Like a child taking his first step, a non-gamer encountering his first MMO is something to be cherished. Two wolves, one cow, and one top-heavy avatar later, Patrick Howe's first foray into "so-called" massively multiplayer games already has him wondering about addiction. Why, usually it takes at least four or five wolves before the average MMO gamer starts checking for the aggro radii of farmyard animals. (Patrick, when you want to know how best to take care of those pesky snow rabbits, we here at Massively.com can point you in the right direction). It's no easy thing to tip a virtual cow and realize you are suddenly standing on the lip of an abyss that contains games that can thrill you, addict you, train soldiers and fight cancer.Did you know that "there are games that require teams of people -- real people, from all over the world -- to work together to solve problems (although those problems often involve killing monsters)?" It's true! Perhaps one of the things that most surprises Patrick is that there are any benefits to playing MMOs. It's hardly surprising, considering the backdrop for his wolf-slaying excursion was an all-day conference on video game compulsion held at Cuesta College last May. It's easy to throw around that word, compulsion. Some people feel compelled to play. Do MMOs, by requiring long periods of play to build up a character and become part of a raiding guild and take part in raids, to have people depend on you, create compulsion in people otherwise compulsion-free? Or is this just the hysteria that accompanies any new leisure time activity, like music, movies, television or football?From the outside, non-gamers see us as addicted troglodytes, sitting in silence as we puppet over-stylized characters into ritual murder games. From the inside, we see it as a fun time with friends. But we all know people who really are a little "too" into their game, and need to take a step or two back, before they find themselves seized by eager psychologists hot to warn the unaware public of the latest danger to their poor children's fragile psyches.
Is your DirectX up to date?
Did you wake up this morning, anxious about something you could not describe? Some nagging worry you couldn't shake? A little paranoia? Have you looked at your computer and felt it was wanting something from you? And you just didn't know what?It's the new update to DirectX 9.0c. That's what your computer has been wanting, assuming it runs Windows versions later than Windows 98 and earlier than Windows Vista. This latest version contains all the bug fixes and performance enhancements they've ever published, so if you want to make sure your graphics engine is at its best, fire up Internet Explorer and head on over to the DirectX download page. You'll have to validate your copy of Windows is genuine, and if you're lucky, you may be invited into an exclusive beta just for visiting the page. Microsoft is revamping their website to use their new Silverlight technology (an alternative to Flash for Windows and OS/X computers), and you may be invited to give Silverlight a test drive.[Via Pumping Irony]
LotRO soundtrack, available for free!
When you can't be slaying orcs in Lord of the Rings Online, you can at least take the music with you to remind you of your glorious defense of the free peoples of Middle-Earth. Turbine is releasing fifty tunes from LotRO as a test of their Turbine Download Manager, a peer-to-peer downloader similar to Blizzard's World of Warcraft patcher. Since the download manager uses Microsoft's .NET frameworks, this only will work under Windows, but the music itself is in .MP3 format and can be played anywhere.Turbine doesn't seem to have included a recording of a line of minstrels playing Freebird in the Prancing Pony in this collection. Maybe next time?UPDATED: Free music no longer available from Turbine. Sorry. :(
EverQuest II GU46 -- Runnyeye: The Gathering
Take a favorite EverQuest II low level dungeon, clear it of every living thing, add some doors and remove others. Fill the entire zone with heroic mobs level 80 and up. Put in ten boss fights culminating with an epic fight against High Chief Vohan, a x2 epic fight that compares to Nizara's final fight (hint: Vohan has friends). Add in a double handful of humor, mix it all together in a pot filled with bathing Halflings, and you come up with the latest dungeon redesign from the fiendish minds of the devs at SOE, Runnyeye: The Gathering.This alternate version of Runnyeye (the original is still selectable before zoning in) is made for decently equipped level 80 groups. Like the recently released Shard of Hate raid zone, the fights get progressively harder, so some groups may choose to stay near the top, while only the very best will dare the depths, where the High Chief waits. Who is gathering and why? Perhaps the answer lies with the Halfling warrior crouching at the entrance, the lone active member of the Old Bog Mountain Unit. He talks of three former members who are off doing other things. It might be well worth tracking them down and ask what happened in Bog Mountain, in which Runnyeye is dug, to cause them to quit the Unit. Click on through for a peek inside the depths of Runnyeye: The Gathering. %Gallery-24776%
EverQuest II GU46 -- The Void Invasion
Mysterious dark clouds shot with some evil energy have appeared all over Norrath, in every zone. But they are more than they seem -- they are not storms at all, but portals into the endless realm of the Void itself. The Void Storms gather up the local creatures and implant creatures of blackest shadow within them, then hold them in thrall until the creature has complete control.In EverQuest II's Game Update 46, you will be tasked with uncovering the mystery of the Void Storms, and freeing the native creatures of Norrath from their baleful influence. Your dedication will not go unrewarded; full sets of appearance armor (and one set of ... non-appearance armor) are yours for your hard work. Unusual weapons, a cart-load of house items, and even a pet goblin are also waiting for you ... in our exclusive GU46 gallery, that takes you through the entire quest and the rewards offered for your continued dedication to Norrath's cleansing. Check out the complete quest and its rewards! %Gallery-24768%
Mythos' Max Schaefer talks about the economics of free
Flagship Studios' action-adventure MMO, Mythos, will be free to download and free to play. How will they ever make any money off the game? Sure, they have an item shop, but will that be enough? In this interview, Mythos' Executive Producer Max Schaefer explains how they will make the game profitable through the economics of free, bringing a World of Warcraft-ish game into a MMO market that already has a WoW, and the rise of indie games.There's not a lot of new information in this interview, We might have asked why they didn't release Mythos as it was, and then release the Overworld as an expansion along with a lot of new content? How would they distinguish themselves from the rumored Diablo 3? What kinds of questions would you have asked about Mythos? If you can propose some really hard ones, we'll send them along and see if we can get some answers.
Going back to EQ or EQ2 but -- which server?
SOE's new Living Legacy event seeks to lure people back to their two main EverQuest games (EverQuest Online Adventures for the PS2 and EverQuest Macintosh Edition get no love here) by using shiny new armors and abilities and super-fast leveling. Both EverQuest and EverQuest II have changed in so many fundamental ways in recent years that SOE really wants you to come back and try the games again.Which server to play, though? Both games have many servers. Nothing like World of Warcraft's hundreds, but enough so that its not immediately obvious which one to choose. SOE has prepared a couple of pages that briefly list the servers and tell you what the odd letters next to their names mean, but in this article, we're going to try to examine servers a little more deeply, so that you can create your character knowing the sorts of people you'll find. More details -- LOTS more -- after the break.
Behind the scenes at Sony's network operations center
If keeping just one computer running and up-to-date is a hassle, imagine keeping six to seven thousand of them going, 24/7, with any unexpected downtime sure to draw the anger of extremely vocal gamers. That's the challenge faced every day by SOE's Director of Technology Operations, Mark Rizzo. Rizzo cut his teeth running the back-end for MMO legend Ultima Online. Back then, he and his team were building things by hand and learning as they went. Now, things are a lot more complicated. With eight games already and more coming online all the time, handling all the users and simultaneous transactions is more like working in the data center for a stock exchange rather than your typical web-hosting service.Says Rizzo, "We did an April Fools' prank in one of the games and we had to have some server code updated to pull the prank off. Change management allowed us to know who approved it, and know where it's from, and where it's going." It's said that if you like sausage or law, you should never see it being made. This peek behind the curtain at the code and hardware that keeps swords flashing and spells weaving just deepens our appreciation of this difficult task.[Via Slashdot]
Unboxing EverQuest's Living Legacy
So you've decided to take SOE up on their Living Legacy promotion, with free two months of gameplay and all the goodies you can fit into your extra-large sized trick-or-treat bag, and are wondering just what you'll find in that bag when you open it. If you're finding yourself in EverQuest, you'll get quite a lot.Legacy Satchel - Your trick-or-treat bag itself is rather nice. The Legacy Satchel is a seven slot bag that can hold any item, no matter how large. Sturdy straps make it easy to find a good spot for this bag among the other nine knapsacks you're juggling. It includes smaller pockets for your PDA and cell phone, for when those get invented.More information on the armor, weapons, potions and other items you'll find in your Legacy Satchel -- after the break.
EverQuest's killing fields
If you find a mysterious scroll pulsing with some strange, dark power, consider letting them eggheads down to Qeynos have a look at it first. Reading it aloud in the hopes it will make your crops grow better ... well, that ain't the brightest thing you ever thought. Farmer McClein got a first hand look at just how bad an idea that was in a GM event last weekend on EverQuest's Luclin server.GM events -- impromptu adventures run by GMs disguised as monsters -- were one of EverQuest's most loved traditions. Raiders and casual players alike would be tossed together to try and figure out a puzzle, kill a certain dragon in the Swamp of No Hope that spawned just once a year, or take on a deadly, zone-wide battle against the Fawcez of Ebil. Perhaps GMs are "in world" now in support of the Living Legend promotion, perhaps MMOQuests' Stargrace was just fortunate enough to be in the right place at the right time for this one, but GM events like this one bring back a time when EQ's dedicated server GMs always seemed to have something happening, somewhere in the world.
Rohan Online: Blood Feud open beta begins
Age of Conan is not the only recent MMO to completely underestimate demand. Asian import Rohan Online: Blood Feud had to open two additional servers as they were flooded with players eager to to join their open beta. Developer YNK Interactive was able to bring on a third server almost immediately, with two more on the way. They'll keep on adding them until they have enough to handle the load.Rohan Online is a free-to-play, PvP-oriented game with a manga-inspired character design and art style. It has a number of innovative elements. If, for example, someone kills you, revenge is easy and quick: Once you are revived, you can teleport instantly to your killer for a rematch. This adds a little something extra to PvP ganking. Kill someone, and when you finally let your guard down ... when you're at your weakest ... that's when you feel the sword bite into your neck. Player guilds can also rule any of the cities in the game. Battles for their control occur every Saturday, with the winners getting the power of taxation over any transactions performed in the town. And, as is usual for games of this nature, there is an item shop.[Via Classy Gamer]
Festival of Unity in EverQuest II
All this week, EverQuest II's Antonia Bayle server celebrates its annual Festival of Unity! For one week each year, dark elves and high elves together raise a cup. Fae and Arasai share pollen-dripping sunflowers. Dwarves break out the GOOD stuff and every table is laden down with pies fresh from Halfling ovens. Barbarians take their annual shower. Ogres and trolls eat gnome cookies instead of gnomes. Dogs and cats live together .... The festival runs from Sunday through Saturday in the zone of Antonica. (That floozy must spend all day thinking of new things to name after herself ...) Tuesday's events include Lawn Darts (weren't these called Gnome Darts last year?), Mentored Dueling Ladder and a High Pounce Challenge. Each evening's events start between 7-8 PM US Eastern time and continue until 10-11 PM EDT. If you have a character on the Antonia Bayle server, why not stop by and take part? Or make a character there and dive into a spider pie with a hundred other hungry folks. And gnomes, be sure to wear hunter orange -- sometimes the trolls need a little reminder.
Explore Bahamar Bayou in Sword of the New World
The developers of innovative, free-to-play MMO Sword of the New World have released Update #4 of their Manifest Destiny expansion which introduces the new area, Bahamar Bayou. This swampy area is filled with new monsters, bosses and quests for your adventuring enjoyment. Need a new friend? Then stop off in Auch and start your quest to earn Garcia Gygax, brother to Eduardo, skilled with pistol and rapier. You will need to have completed ALL the Auch quests before you can start the quest for this honorable and ferocious fighter. (And yes, the Gygax brothers are named in honor of the father of role-playing games, E. Gary Gygax).Also in this patch are new swim trunks and bikinis for those times when you just need to relax and recharge between forays into the wilderness. Also added is Lucifer's Wing Pack and two additional Lacquers.Be sure to read the full patch notes for the complete list of new features and bug fixes in this latest update!
Dark Age of Camelot developer chat
The Dark Age of Camelot developers would like a word with you. Want to ask about the proposed OF (Old Frontier) server? Concerned about falling subscription numbers? Want to know what Mythic is doing for people who really liked the old PvE content? Hate open regional chat? This is your chance to give the developers your input, and to find out what they have to say about things.Since they want to accommodate everyone, they will be having two chats. The first is set for June 4th, 2008, between 6:30 and 7:30 PM, US Easterm Time. The second follows on June 5th, between 6:30 and 7:30 US Pacific Time. Producer Chris Rabideau and Community Coordinator Joanne Laroche will be on hand for both chats. Community Director Robert Mull and perhaps some other devs will also be attending on the first night. You'll need an IRC client of some sort to take part. The IRC server is irc.gamesurge.net, and the channel is #ignvault. If you're at all interested in the current and future plans for Mythic's venerable Realm-vs-Realm (RvR) game, you owe it to yourself to attend.
A first look at Mythos' Overworld
What do you call it when the developers of a hotly anticipated free-to-play Diablo-esque MMO decide at virtually the last minute to entirely redesign their game? You could call it crazy, or unwise, but developers of the upcoming title Mythos went ahead and did just that. Many of Flagship Studios' beta players said the game was more than ready to ship as it was, but it wasn't good enough for the developers. They combined all the instanced, single player overland zones into one massive continent, shared among all players. Instead of being reached by maps that led players through narrow paths to dungeons which looked identical from the outside, the devs placed the dungeons, Oblivion-like, through the world. For the past week, the folks at Flagship promised the Overworld Real Soon Now. A deathwatch was kept on the forums. It was going to be the next day, or the day after, or in a few hours. Players gathered on Mythos' IRC channel where devs tossed out tantalizing hints of what was to come. Then around 9pm EST dev Taylor Balbi advised everyone to re-patch and log in to the Test Center to see the Overworld. He gave some advice as people hurried to be the first into the new world. Test Center will be a separate server. Test Center and Beta Server will be online at the same time and require the same client. To tell which version you currently have, the login screen screen will make it obvious (two different ones). Test Center will start lagging after like 800 people, Mythos Beta won't. Taylor Balbi is Awesome. We think the other Flagship devs are pretty awesome as well. Though there were more than a few glitches with patching, we were able to eventually get in and take a quick run around some of the Overworld, its dungeons, the villages outside Stonehill, and the city of Stonehill itself. All we have left to wait for now is the open beta, expected in the next several weeks. Take a first look at Mythos' Overworld with us %Gallery-10781%
Second Life marketing: still strong
Two years ago, BusinessWeek did a cover story on Second Life and sparked an explosion of interest in marketing in virtual worlds. Many of the early efforts to market in Second Life were little more than unimaginative billboards copying real-world advertising. Despite downbeat reports, more than a dozen advertising agencies are actively developing advertising campaigns within Second Life.BusinessWeek looks back on how successful ad agencies have used the particular strengths of the virtual world to get their messages across. Second Life users are intensely devoted to their world. Advertisers who identify the various sub-communities and narrow their focus can put the power of a dedicated fan community to work for them. Secondly, using online space to mimic real world advertising, such as putting goods in a virtual shopping mall, actively rejects the very things that make advertising in virtual worlds so effective. Lastly, use the brands the virtual worlds brings to the table, such as Playboy encouraging third-party brands to sell virtual versions of their goods on their Playboy Island.Publishing your brochure unchanged in a virtual world won't entice anyone. Put your products on display in a creative, interactive way, let your customers enjoy virtual versions of your products, and know your community, and your virtual world money will be well-spent.[Via Virtual Worlds News]
Hero's Journey, WRU?
We love the signs of spring; the green leaves on the trees; the children playing on the new grass; the annual news from long-in-development MMO, Hero's Journey. We have five new screenshots from the game, and we have to admit, they look absolutely fantastic. Like Darkfall Online, Hero's Journey is perennially on the verge of going into some sort of beta. And like Darkfall, they have promised the stove, refrigerator, cupboards AND kitchen sink to eager players.Hero's Journey features complete character customization, similar to Chronicles of Spellborn; a dual-class adventure progression similar to those seen in Final Fantasy XI and Guild Wars; and a reactive combat system, similar to that seen in Vanguard. We do hope to see Hero's Journey at some point, and look forward to hearing more about its progress next year.[Via Gamebunny]%Gallery-23631%
Changes coming for EVE time cards
To simplify the EVE Online Time Code (ETC) and Game Time Card (GTC) reseller program and to become more consistent with what other MMORPGs offer, CCP is replacing all their myriad time cards with one. The 30- and 90-day time cards sold by authorized resellers, and the 50- and 100-day cards and game time cards sold in the EVE Online store will be replaced with a 60-day ETCs and GTCs. The old cards and codes will still be available while supplies last, or until CCP makes the changeover to the new cards on June 15.Not announced is whether or not these new codes will still be able to be bought with the in-game currency, ISK, but it's certain that will still be an option.