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The Nexus Telegraph Extra: WildStar's deafening silence
How many people are currently playing WildStar? I don't know. You don't know, either, beyond vague guesses based on things like Raptr numbers, which say more about what Raptr users like to play than about actual game popularity. But it seems like the sort of answer that could be used to at least deflect a great deal of criticism, doesn't it? If Carbine Studios is sitting on two million players at a reasonable level of activity, that wouldn't shut down all discussion of the game's myriad problems, but it sure as heck would demand some rethinking. That's precisely what I asked when I, at Carbine's behest, sent the team questions about the health of the game over a week ago. The bad news is that Carbine still hasn't answered my questions, nine days later. But the good news is that in the interim, Carbine was willing to tell another site that WildStar does not have a "player interest" problem, which seems like the sort of waffley question you'd answer if you really didn't want to be specific.
Daily App: Shady allows you to dim your Mac's overly bright display
Shady is a handy OS X utility that sits in your menu bar and allows you to dim your Mac's screen beyond what is available is OS X. It's useful for Mac owners whose eyes are sensitive to light or for nighttime use when you don't want to light up the entire room with your Mac's overly bright screen. Shady doesn't modify the dim settings in OS X, it works by overlaying a virtual shade over your entire screen. This overlay can be darkened to the point where the entire screen is almost black (90% opacity) or lightened so it has no effect (0% opacity). The default setting is 40% opacity and you can adjust the darkening in 5 percent increments. You can change the darkness level of Shady by clicking on the menu bar icon and adjusting the slider. You also can drop the application icon into the Dock and then click on Shady to bring it to the forefront. When it is the frontmost application, you can use the Up/Down keys to adjust the shade or click "Q" to quit. Shady is available for free from Instinctive Code. It is compatible with Mac OS X Leopard (10.5), and Snow Leopard (10.6) or later.
New website provides online opt-out services for game EULAs
If you're like most of us, you don't read the giant wall o' legalese that serves as a speed bump on the way to your favorite virtual world. A group of Redditors has, though, and has set up a new website designed to assist gamers in opting out of the clause that prevents participation in potential class action lawsuits leveled against gaming service providers. Apparently opting out requires that a physical letter be mailed to the gaming company in question, and GamersOptOut.com purports to do the tedious work for you (either for free or for a voluntary donation). The catch is that you'll need to provide personal information, including your name, address, and game account name. The website's creators page lists the online handles (as well as Xbox Live, PSN, and Twitter identities) of those responsible, but given the anonymous nature of the site and the privacy concerns raised by providing your personal info, we suggest you proceed with caution. Currently the website features an opt-out form for Sony's PlayStation network and Electronic Arts' new Origin digital delivery service.
Notion Ink Adam gets caught Photoshopping its bezel away
How big is the Notion Ink Adam's screen? Well, it depends on what time you looked at the company's site today. If you were one of the unlucky folks who saw the image titled "preordernow.jpg," the screen's a tiny bit smaller and the bezel a tad larger than it is for all the fortunate peeps pre-ordering from the "preordernow1.jpg" pic that's currently gracing the site. Now's your chance, guys -- go grab yourself the truly magical and revolutionary tablet whose specs change with the wave of a Photoshop airbrush. [Thanks, Andrew] Update: To be clear, we don't know which of the two 'shops is the real deal -- technically, neither is, they're both renders -- but earlier prototypes have shown some pretty slinky bezels. It'll be on Notion Ink to demonstrate just how slim the Adam's screen surround is when it finally unveils the real deal.
Comment spam, lewd advertising, and stolen assets abound for Evony
If you've been on the internet for longer than five minutes then you've probably run into ads for Evony, an online free-to-play browser real-time strategy game. The game is a medieval MMORTS, but you probably wouldn't be able to figure that out from some of their recent advertisements, most of which center around lingerie and women.The game's unorthodox marketing strategy has been a target of the blogosphere for some time, starting back when they were still called Civony instead of their current title. During that time the company was caught by bloggers for stealing images without permission from other sites and using them for their game's marketing. Since then, the name has changed and new advertising has appeared, including an overuse of blog comment spam.Interestingly enough, the company has denounced the use of spam amongst their users of the iEvony codes, calling it a "unethical" and "abusive."The company may have more to worry about than just poor taste in marketing, as many sites are also noting that the game's art assets and writing assets have been ripped from other real-time strategy games. Things such as text from Civilization 4 to the castle sprites from Age of Empires have been found in the game, creating the feeling for some users that this developer, whoever it is, is not entirely on the legitimate side.
EVE Online player loses USD 19,000 in shady virtual currency deal
The sci-fi game EVE Online is set apart from many other massively multiplayer online games by its economy. While there are currently problems with the game's market due to a serious exploit, the economy isn't getting reset anytime soon. The currency of EVE's virtual economy is the Inter Stellar Kredit (ISK). As in the real world, money can be power in EVE's 'New Eden' galaxy. Most online games built around a virtual economy will ultimately need to deal with the real money trading (RMT) issue -- either make it a bannable offense or support and regulate it in some way. CCP Games figured if RMT is happening whether they want it to or not, they may as well have some way to regulate it. EVE Online has a few legitimate ways to bring real world money into the game. Game Time Cards (EVE Time Codes) can be converted to ISK without risk of getting your teeth banhammered in by CCP Games. They offer a secure way to sell game time to players where neither party can be scammed, and more recently a way to turn game time into an item (PLEX) that can be sold on the open market in-game. When a player buys that item, he or she extends their account subscription. The upside for some players is that they can actually pay their subscription fees in the ISK they've earned in-game, for others it enables them to buy a faction battleship or a number of other virtual items.But... some people just go too far with all this, and buy ISK in huge amounts. Even worse is doing so outside of the EULA-safe methods. This was the case with an EVE player in Denmark, who paid 100,000 Danish Krones (the rough equivalent of 13,500 Euros or USD 19,000) for currency from a shady ISK seller outside of the secure system, and was ultimately left with empty pockets, even after the case ended up in court.
