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Netflix experiments with a random play button
Sometimes you just don't want to think. Who cares if it makes no narrative sense, let's just watch a random episode of your favorite show. For some Netflix users, they can throw caution to the wind. As spotted by Android Police, the streaming service is testing a "Random Episode" button where the next episode shortcut is usually found. There's also a shuffle rail of Netflix's most popular shows where you can leap into the streaming ether entirely at random.
The Nexus Telegraph: Addictions that WildStar must kick
Matt Daniel is a friend of mine. (Yes, despite my claims at the end of some poorly considered features we did together.) He's also a spectacularly bright guy with a clear picture of what games do well and what they do poorly. So when he and I wind up chatting about WildStar and noting the exact same problems, I take this stuff to heart. And there are a couple of underlying issues that the game would do well to address sooner rather than later. I've talked about issues that the game has before, but a lot of those issues are really symptoms, not the core issues. I enjoy the game a lot, and I think it has a lot to recommend it, but there are some nagging fundamental issues, just certain ways of viewing the game and the community. As we approach the all-important three-month mark, it's time to start thinking about those issues, about what they represent, and perhaps most importantly about how those issues can be addressed.
Random for iOS lets you explore the web in a unique way
Random - The App (free) is a new app that lets you discover interesting web content from several sources. The app has been in development for a few years, and it was backed by by Skype co-founder, Janus Friis. When you first start the app, you will see some subject headings. Click on one, and you'll be taken to a story that fits the subject. When you'e finished, the app will have more subjects to explore that are related to what you just clicked on. Note that you cannot go back to that previous page, however. So choose the one topic you want to browse carefully, as there's no back button. "Discovering content online has become a stale experience that's primarily driven by typing and clicking and trying to keep up with our social feeds. We're being led down the same path to similar content repeatedly," said Marko Anderson, co-founder of Random. "We created Random to inspire people to be curious and to embrace serendipity." The app certainly works. You wind up looking at things you might not see otherwise, and it is far less limiting than a news app or an online magazines. The presentation is nice on the eyes. Screens fade from one to another, and there seems to be an almost endless array of colors for backgrounds. The app learns from your selections, and over time it 'self-tunes' to meet your interests, yet it still offers surprising content you would probably not find surfing in more traditional ways. You can use Random without signing up for anything. Just tap and go. You can also open any Random-generated page in Safari. Random will show you eessays, web pages, videos or photographs. In short, almost anything that is on the web. In the early days of the Internet, we were awash in information. As things got more organized, it was possible to live in a walled garden getting only the type of news or information we wanted. That's positive, but it also has negative aspects, because we can surround ourselves with information we already agree with, never having our ideas challenged. Of course, that's an extreme example, but apps like Random redress the balance and drop ideas into our lives that we may want to explore but would not otherwise see. If I could change anything about the app, it would be that once I get to a subject, I like to explore that particular subject more deeply. I clicked on films, and got taken to a review of "Noah." I wanted to read more, but next click I was presented with lots of other cinema stories, but nothing about "Noah." Maybe that's by design, but I felt my exploration was thwarted by the rules. Give Random a try and see if it satisfies some of your intellectual curiosities. It's a very interesting idea, and nicely executed. Random is a universal app and requires iOS 6 or later.
Tiptoe through Spotify's untouched tunes with Forgotify
Not every song is a smash hit, and for every Katy Perry, there are thousands of Justin Guarinis praying for some attention. At last count, there are around four million songs on Spotify that haven't even been played -- which is why some kind soul has created Forgotify. Simply head to Forgotify.com, click the start listening button and the web app will randomly pick one of the unloved tracks to play. Voila! New music you probably never knew existed. If the outfit's estimates are accurate, you could go a long time before hearing something even remotely well-known, but be warned -- some of these songs were probably forgotten for a reason.
Storyboard: Don't fight with /random
Most of my Storyboard columns center on larger issues, providing advice in some way. This one does not. This one is purely about one of the elements of roleplaying in MMOs that I particularly dislike: using in-game random rolls to determine the outcome of actions during tense scenes (or out-of-game rolls in games that don't support /random or /roll or something similar). This is a time-honored practice in MMOs, but I've never had many nice things to say about it, to the point that I wrote an entire column about dueling without even discussing it. In practice, it makes sense, casting otherwise unresolvable situations back to the realm of tabletop gaming. What's not to like? Lots of things. Resolving conflicts with random dice rolls is unsatisfying and to be avoided at all costs. And if you want to compare it to tabletop gaming, you're making a lot of logical leaps that don't hold up under scrutiny.
Grid 2's 'Live Routes' alter tracks and turns
This latest trailer from Grid 2 shows off the game's "Live Routes" system, which pitches different forks in the road every time you play it.
The Daily Grind: Do you randomize things during character creation?
If a game has more than four options during character creation, it has the option for you to randomize everything. In a game like World of Warcraft, this can be somewhat manageable. Games like Champions Online or the departed City of Heroes will almost inevitably produce utter insanity, since you're drawing from a huge pool of random parts and colors. And that's not even discussing games that let you randomize your class or abilities, or doing so yourself through the time-honored art of clicking without looking. But this isn't a bad thing. Sometimes the easiest way to cut through a sea of options is to just roll the dice and get something you can work into looking better. Heck, sometimes your random nonsense becomes memorable in its own right (as evidenced by Javier Placeholder up above). So do you randomize things during character creation, or is each of your characters carefully sculpted with no room for randomness? Every morning, the Massively bloggers probe the minds of their readers with deep, thought-provoking questions about that most serious of topics: massively online gaming. We crave your opinions, so grab your caffeinated beverage of choice and chime in on today's Daily Grind!
Camelot Unchained plans to bring random back
Mark Jacobs knows the problem with your games: They're too predictable. What MMOs need are some good old-fashioned chaos. What happened to the days when you would turn in a quest for which the reward could be endgame armor or it could be a piece of moldy cheese? Let's bring that back into style! All right, not that far. The latest Camelot Unchained development blog is all about randomness, however, with Jacobs laying out another design principle centering around the need for a strong random element in play. Jacobs sees a need for unpredictable outcomes as one of the core elements of a game, something to keep you playing because the game cannot be expected to run a specific course every time. This extends to both the combat system and the state of the world in general, with the former embracing more factors than simple levels and the latter being a bit more dynamic and unpredictable. If you're interested in reading more on this point, take a look at the full rundown at the official site.
The Daily Grind: How do you handle random party invites?
I don't know why, but sometimes I get discouraged when a random person sends me a party invite while I'm in the middle of questing. I know it sounds odd, but when I'm not playing with my regular group of friends or guildies, I like to just play alone. When someone whispers me to ask if he can join me, I usually turn him down (politely!), but if I get a random party invite without so much as a hello, I simply ignore it. My own antisocial issues aside, I want to know how you feel about this topic. Do you think a random invite is a healthy way to find companions and possibly friends, or do you see it as an invasion of privacy while you're trying to quest? Every morning, the Massively bloggers probe the minds of their readers with deep, thought-provoking questions about that most serious of topics: massively online gaming. We crave your opinions, so grab your caffeinated beverage of choice and chime in on today's Daily Grind!
Bronze makes your music collection sound downright lazy
No matter how large your record collection is, there'll always be days when you're sick and tired of everything you own. There are some pretty easy fixes to this, of course -- streaming music services, internet radio, and even the old fashioned terrestrial variety, but none attack the problem quite as directly as Bronze. The app was co-created by Golden Silvers' front man, Gwilym Gold, in part as a clever way to promote his new track, "Flesh Freeze," a hushed, Robert Wyatt-esque number, which just so happens to be the only song that it's compatible with at present. Bronze combats musical stagnation by altering the music itself, assuring that no two listens of a song are ever quite the same, running an algorithm that jumbles the sequence and presence of elements including the instruments and vocals. The changes are generally fairly subtle from play to play, taking a few listens to really pick up on what's unfolding. At present, it's available as a download for the Mac, with Windows and mobile versions to follow. It's free for now, but that, like the song, should change soon enough.
Frogster gives us piles of Runes of Magic stats
While not everyone is a math or statistics geek, there's a certain intriguing quality to MMO stats. Whenever we post statistics for games, there are inevitably discussions on concurrent users, paid subscribers, and overall registered accounts. Unfortunately, free-to-play games like Frogster's Runes of Magic don't really lend themselves to discussions of subscriptions vs. registered accounts since it has no monthly fee. Nevertheless, the game still provides some interesting statistics. According to a release sent earlier today, Frogster has posted a handful of curious stats that are sure to pique the interest of those who love to dissect MMO minutiae. Over the last two years, 6,657,370 characters have stepped into Runes of Magic. Mages are an incredibly popular class, with 2.2 million characters, and there's a tie at 650,000 characters created for both Rogues and Warriors. Apparently, the Priest/Mage dual class is a highly popular combo for players; and Priest takes secondary class of choice at 350,000, followed by Warriors with 150,000. Over three million characters serve as Herbalists, with 1.1 million players dabbling in Alchemy. English-speaking servers have seen 3,505,269 quests turned in and 4,622 guilds created. Groups in the game have taken the Demon Lord down 4,521 times and have wiped the floor with Erekat III almost three times more. Raksha is still the one to beat, according to Frogster's metrics, which suggest that boss has only been downed 182 times on the highest difficulty. Finally, no raid would be complete without silly pets along for a screenshot -- we're told that there are over 100,000 rune pets tagging along with players. In all, it's certainly an interesting set of statistics, if a bit random. After all, Frogster was very careful not to say which class was the overall most popular one!
Choose My Adventure Live: Join Roblinator in a dungeon
Choose the adventures of Robin Torres as Roblinator the goblin shamanator or join in with <It came from the Blog> on Zangarmarsh (US-PvE-H). This week, I'll be doing a random dungeon. Please join me if you are in your early level 20s. Alternatively, you can watch me in the stream above and participate in the chat room after the break. Update: The stream is now over. Please click on the image above for the video replay.
Be the first to show up at the Engadget Show with Lucky Charms and Peter Molyneux will put you in Fable III! (We've got winners!)
Hey, Peter Molyneux is here at the Engadget Show, and his Fable III demo assistant Dimitri mentioned that he's looking for a box of Lucky Charms, since he can't get it in England. That prompted Peter to make an insane crowd-sourcing offer: the first person to bring a box of Lucky Charms to the Engadget Show will become a character in Fable III. Insane, right? What's more, everyone else who brings a box will get a free signed copy of the game, which is some seriously serious cereal. The show starts in 30 minutes -- we'll see you soon! Updated: See that lucky guy and girl right up there?! Yep, they're going to be characters in Fable III. Congrats, Monica and Jay -- we'll see you in the game.
TUAW's Daily App: Articles
We've talked about Articles here on the site before. Out of all of the apps that won Apple Design Awards this year, I would say it's probably the most underrated and most useful. It's a Wikipedia reader, which doesn't sound like much since the mobile version of Wikipedia is pretty good already. Having a dedicated app for the open source encyclopedia makes a surprising difference, though, and it allows you to consume all of that content in a really focused way. There are integrated maps and photos and lots of different ways to browse information, including shaking the iPhone to see a random page. The new update doesn't hurt either; version 1.3 adds a language picker, a new Table of Contents sheet, and an orientation lock that even works on the iPhone (a previous update already made the app all ready for iOS 4.0 and the Retina Display). Articles is US$2.99, which might seem pricey to browse content that you can already read for free. However, if you've participated in a few marathon Wikipedia sessions just by following a few random reference links, it's well worth the purchase.
Officers' Quarters: Rolling like jerks
Every Monday Scott Andrews contributes Officers' Quarters, a column about the ins and outs of guild leadership. He is the author of The Guild Leader's Handbook, available this spring from No Starch Press. Ah, the good, old-fashioned /random command -- where would WoW be without it? It fixes so many problems. It's utterly impartial. It can't be bribed, cajoled, or reasoned with. The /random command is the friend of every PUG raid leader. In a guild setting, however, using /random for loot distribution only works when you're sensible about using it. When you're not, you open up your guild to some terrible situations. I present Exhibit A: Hi Scott, I'm a semi officer in my guild (I get to be in officer chat, but I can't invite people or make policy changes, though I'm asked for my opinion quite a bit). Lately, our guild is just managing to kill the first four bosses of Icecrown in both 10 man, and the 25 man that we have to pug. (We're not a huge guild.) But lately, we've been having some problems with loot distribution. I know I know, that's always the case isn't it? Well over the past few weeks, we've been noticing some problems with the /rolls we've been doing. In one 25 man ICC, 3 pieces of tank loot dropped, were rolled on, and went to 1 single tank(not even the MT). Problem is, Tanking isn't the role he likes to do. He enjoys healing or DPSing... but because he's gotten the loot, our Guild leader and MT wants him to be the offtank... If that was the end of it, it'd be easy enough to fix. Get a loot council and be done with it. But, since we PUG our 25 mans, those rules don't apply, and they got worse when one of our healers rolled on a healing weapon, then immediately posted in guild, "Anyone in the raid want this thing for 6K? I need my epic flyer."
Frozen orbs to be greed only in patch 3.3.3
Well, this is a welcome change -- now that Frozen Orbs are going to be the new crafting tokens, exchangeable for Frost Lotus and Eternal Fire, among other things, Wryxian announced that they will be greed only in the upcoming patch. Wryxian No, you won't be able to exchange Frozen Orbs for Emblems of Frost. Yeah it just takes one person to press Need after everyone's pressed Greed on the Frozen Orbs and you miss out. But the good news is that in patch 3.3.3 this won't be the case anymore -- the roll for Frozen Orbs will be an automatic Greed roll. Rejoice! source I wonder whether this is now some sort of flag in their database that they could use for other items. Like Books of Glyph Mastery. Nothing is more annoying than someone ninja looting jerk looting something that everyone gains equal benefit from. Edit: Ninjas are cool. People who steal from their peers are not. Stop calling them ninjas. Patch 3.3.3 brings about small but noteworthy changes to the World of Warcraft. From a faster CoT, to putting those old Frozen Orbs to better use, to changes to the auction house -- there's several things all WoW players need to know. WoW.com's Guide to Patch 3.3.3 will keep you up to date!
Drama Mamas: Dungeon Finder advice
Dodge the drama and become that player everyone wants in their group with the Drama Mamas. Lisa Poisso and Robin Torres are real-life mamas and experienced WoW players -- and just as we don't want our precious babies to be the ones kicking and wailing on the floor of checkout lane next to the candy, neither do we want you to become known as That Guy on your server. We're taking your questions at DramaMamas (at) WoW (dot) com. Most of us have been having a great time with the new Dungeon Finder. (And if you haven't, then you really, really should. It's a gamechanger.) We have our good PuG stories and, of course, the bad PuGs. My first experience was in a dungeon where all but the main boss had been downed. I got in because the rogue whose place my mage was taking had quit in order to turn in a quest. None of us could figure out why he didn't want to wait the three minutes, get the random dungeon rewards and then turn in the quest. But his loss was my gain. He was a bad PuGger (PuGgie? PuGinator?) because he left his team hanging and waiting to pick up a 5th person before they could finish their dungeon and move onto the next one. Here are some more examples of bad PuGgers that I think most of us can agree on: The player who puts the tank on follow and doesn't participate. The tanks who don't pay attention to healer mana and then complain when they die. The players who don't manage their aggro, regardless of role. Rude and/or spammy chatters. Players who make careless mistakes and repeatedly wipe the group. (One mistake does not a bad PuGger make.) But what about the player in blues and greens who doesn't make mistakes, is perfectly pleasant and cooperative, but isn't putting out the numbers you think he or she should?
New Perky Pug animations
MMO Champion has dug up a few more animations for the already popular Perky Pug pet, which you will be able to obtain in patch 3.3 by running pickup groups with random players (the current guess on the pet is running with 100 random players, but of course we won't know for sure until it appears on the live realms). The first few animations in this video just look like the Pug has been tweaked a bit (looks to me like that weird leg thing got fixed), but the last animation is definitely new. MMOC suggests you might not want the pet any more after you see it doing this, but I guess Blizzard wanted to go for realism. Personally, I'm still going for it. Dogs are dogs, and I'm going to be running with the new LFG system (actually, according to the last patch notes, it's called the "Dungeon Finder system" now) anyway, so I might as well go all out and get a vanity pet and the "Patient" title along with all of the other good stuff you usually get from running a ton of heroics. Perky Pug, here I come! Patch 3.3 is the last major patch of Wrath of the Lich King. With the new Icecrown Citadel 5-man dungeons and 10/25-man raid arriving soon, patch 3.3 will deal the final blow to Arthas. WoW.com's Guide to Patch 3.3 will keep you updated with all the latest patch news.
Hallow's End was exactly random enough
Now that Hallow's End is over for another year, it's time to settle up. We already asked whether you got what you wanted, but according to the informal polls (and the feedback I've been hearing), quite a few people didn't actually get everything they were trying for. As we mentioned on the podcast the other week, many people who said they did everything they could probably didn't (did you really go trick-or-treating every hour of every day during the holiday?), but it's not too far a stretch to suggest that maybe the drop rates for some of the hardest items to get (the Horseman's helm and the Sinister Squashling pet seem to be the toughest, though I heard a lot of stories about hard-to-find toothpicks, too) are a little bit lower than they should be for fairness. Not so, says Bornakk -- he said while the holiday was ongoing that the drop rates were fine, and now that it's over, he says they're still fine. That doesn't mean Blizzard won't change it for next year, but it does mean that they don't have any current plans to change the holiday at all. "The randomness," as he says, "can win sometimes." Our condolences if you were trying for an item and didn't get it -- even on a 50/50 coin flip, there's still a chance to see one side 1000 times in a row. We sincerely mean this one: better luck next year.
Breakfast Topic: The ninja problem
The new LFG system is certainly great, but there's one problem with random PuGs that I'm sure it won't fix, and that is of course the problem of ninjas. As long as random people are getting into groups (and with the new rewards system in place, there'll be plenty of that), some of them will always find the loot more tempting than keeping their reputation clean. So what's the solution? Obviously, over on Guildwatch, we've been covering people shouting out names and guilds on the forums for a while, but as we've also reported a few times over there, that barely helps -- even if people do remember a ninja on their server, one name change later and they're gone. A few guildleaders over on Jubei'thos have tried putting a site together to track known ninjas on the server, but even that has issues; it's tough to avoid false positives, even if you do require screenshots. But surely there must be a solution, so let's put our heads together: a debuff? Something like the group vote-kicking system that's coming in patch 3.3? If Blizzard wanted to really go for fair, they could just take the Need-before-Greed system and turn it into straight Need: if an item matches your class and spec, you get a roll (with items everyone can use giving everyone a roll), and the best roll always wins. You can turn it off (for a Master Looter-style raid), but for PuGs, why even bother with a Need/Greed difference? What do you think?
