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EVE blogger unveils Project Athena, a collection of fictional ship manuals
Few things impress me about EVE Online's community more than the incredible videos, artwork and fiction created by players. For the role-playing and fiction-writing communities, the game's continually-updated prime fiction acts as a canvas onto which new stories can be blended. Long-time EVE blogger Kirith Kodachi over at Inner Sanctum of the Ninveah has been an avid fiction-writer and contributor to EVE Tribune, producing several articles based on in-character technical overviews of EVE ships. Over the past two years, Kirith has been teaming up with artists and volunteer writers to collaborate on creating a more comprehensive collection of these articles. Written in the style of fictional ship manuals and presented as technical briefings interspersed with historical information, the completed project (dubbed "Project Athena") features full articles on 23 ships and their Tech 2 counterparts. Although the historical information and technical specifications have been invented by Kirith and his contributors, he's done his best to stick as closely as possible to the official EVE prime fiction. At 64 MB, the huge PDF file isn't a small download, but for role-players or fans of EVE fiction it's definitely worth a look.
Funcom's Morrison talks story in MMOs
Funcom game director Craig "Silirrion" Morrison has delivered an epic-length post over on his personal blog examining the various aspects of story in MMORPGs. Given the fact that BioWare has recently raised a few eyebrows with their story, story, and more story mantra (not to mention some old-fashioned genre heckling), it seems only natural that industry veterans like Morrison would have something to say on the matter. The Age of Conan executive producer, who is also a former game director on Funcom's long-running Anarchy Online title, talks about everything from the practicality of a single-player story to the desire for it in a massively multiplayer title. "If a game is said to have poor game-play or lacks a good user experience, having a great story rarely tends to save its sales figures. So the game-play is still the most important thing, and it is the same for an MMO. The story is a very close second, but it is second," he writes. Morrison goes on to share anecdotes including his storytelling experiences in World of Warcraft as well as his views that MMOs already surpass single-player games in terms of communal storytelling. Grab a cup of coffee and check out the full post over on his blog.
For Gnomeregan! Team ups
For Gnomeregan! is where the members of <B.L.O.G.> on Shadow Council (US-RP-A) roleplay guild meetings as part of an in-blog and in-game RP campaign. The rules for this campaign are: no ERP (Erotic RolePlay) and no vampires (though death knights are welcome). Everyone is invited to participate. Assume that to get into the guild, you at least pretended to be in full use of your faculties and are willing to fight for the cause. You are all welcome to join us here in the comments and those who wish to play with us in-game should friend Peenk and ask for an invite on Shadow Council (US-RP-A). Hey. Kixi Sparklebolt here again. Some of you have told me that you have training buddies or are teaming up for stuff. This. This is exactly the kind of initiative I want to see from all of you. I also have a training buddy. Darkpeep is quiet and weird and I'm not sure all of her brain was reanimated with the rest of her, but together we are practicing our battle skills on the Horde. Darkpeep is her nickname, obviously, but she won't even tell me her full name. Does she remember it? I don't know!
For Gnomeregan! How goes your training?
For Gnomeregan! is where the members of <B.L.O.G.> on US Shadow Council roleplay guild meetings as part of an in-blog and in-game RP campaign. The rules for this campaign are: no ERP (Erotic RolePlay) and no vampires (though death knights are welcome). Everyone is invited to participate. Assume that to get into the guild, you at least pretended to be in full use of your faculties and are willing to fight for the cause. You are all welcome to join us here in the comments and those who wish to play with us in-game should friend Peenk and ask for an invite on US Shadow Council-A. For Gnomeregan! I've lived a sheltered life since my familee escaped our home citee, so I took my normal-sized feet to see the wide world. I traveled to all of our major allied citees in Azeroth, funding my trip by runneeng errands for people along the way. I was particularlee moved by my trip to the night elf lands. While prospective employers have treeted me with respect and have withheld judgment of my appeerance until after I have proven myself, the local adventurers have largelee been prejudiced and insulteeng. Emphasis on the word "large." They are gigantic there.
For Gnomeregan! Welcome to the first meeting of B.L.O.G.
For Gnomeregan! is where the members of <B.L.O.G.> on US Shadow Council-A roleplay guild meetings as part of an in-blog and in-game RP campaign. The rules for this campaign are: no ERP (Erotic RolePlay) and no vampires (though death knights are welcome). Everyone is invited to participate. Assume that to get into the guild, you at least pretended to be in full use of your faculties and are willing to fight for the cause. You are all welcome to join us here in the comments and those who wish to play with us in-game should friend Peenk and ask for an invite on US Shadow Council-A. Peenkerella "Peenk" Sparklebolt presides over our first meeting via the magic of guild chat. Hear ye! Hear ye! Or whatever. I don't know how to start these things. Ahem. Anyway. Welcome to B.L.O.G.! I'm glad you all could join us. As you know, we have created this guild specifically to train for Operation: Gnomeregan. The High Tinker himself authorized his representative to authorize us to form this training army. All races are invited to join, as long as they are willing to work for the cause of the gnome exiles. /sigh I'm not going to pretend. We all came here hoping to help and were told we weren't ready to join the official army. So we are training together in the hopes of being used in the coming offensive. Our personal goals right now should be to train our skills and work for people willing to help equip our army. Later, we will have organized drills to learn to fight together as a team. Our agenda for this, our first meeting, is to go around and introduce ourselves. I'll begin:
Determining civil and criminal liability for the lost iPhone
Editor's Note: One of the advantages of having an attorney on the TUAW team is the opportunity for this sort of deep-dive legal analysis. We asked Lauren to dig into the circumstances and statutes around the case of the mystery iPhone, and she obliged. While Lauren is a real lawyer, she's not your lawyer, nor is she licensed in California, so please do not make decisions about what to do with found property in bars without consulting your own legal counsel. Ever since Gizmodo put up those pictures and claimed to have Apple's next iPhone in hand, questions have been swirling about what the repercussions, if any, might be from a legal perspective. While the iPhone's peddler probably ought to be finding himself a lawyer, the more interesting question is this: is Gizmodo courthouse-bound? This question has gotten increasingly more interesting in light of the fact that as of today, CNET reports that Silicon Valley police are looking into the matter. Let's break it down, with a lengthy look at just who might be wronged and how. Find the nearest leather chair, a bookcase of legal tomes, sew on your elbow patches, and get ready to look contemplative. There are two entities to which Giz could be forced to answer: they are Apple, and the State of California, representing both civil and criminal liability respectively.
How to make $150 million in a day
Seth Godin has a great post up that serves as a good capper on what may have been Apple's best product launch ever. He puts the money made by Apple last Saturday morning at around $150 million, and even if that's not exactly right, I have to say that having been through a few Apple launches now, I think the iPad's launch was the smoothest and easiest opening I've seen -- for all of the complaints and problems people who haven't bought an iPad seem to have, those who did buy one on Saturday seemed happy to me. So how did Apple pull it all off? As Godin says, they started years ago. Apple is one of the only companies in the world with not only the power to set up limits on access on a device this big, but also keep a rabid fanbase hyped and waiting. Apple has created an image designed exactly for releasing products like this, with the secrecy and speculation and announcement events, and so on. And the company has backed up that image with pristine engineering and design -- as Godin says, rather than be everything to everyone, it promised a few things to a certain group of people (the iPad can't do Flash or multitask or take pictures), and then delivered (but it can do the things it does really, really well). And perhaps most importantly, when launch time came around, Apple's management didn't focus on "launching," they focused on simply getting the product into customers' hands. The iPhone had all kinds of issues with setup and purchasing and activating and so on, but Apple went out of its way during the iPad launch to make sure customers had the iPad when they were supposed to --waived shipping fees, plenty of inventory in stores, and a push for delivery at exactly the right time. That's how you make $150 million in a day: Promise what you'll deliver, and deliver what you'll promise.
iPhone hacked at Pwn2Own contest
An iPhone got hacked in just 20 seconds at this week's Pwn2Own hacking contest at CanSecWest 2010, reports Ryan Naraine for ZDnet. Hackers Vincenzo Iozzo and Ralf Philipp Weinmann demoed an exploit that allowed them to send a target iPhone to a web site that they'd set up online, and then copied off the entire SMS database on the iPhone (including deleted text messages) to their own server. The browser crashed during the hijack, but the hackers say that with a little tweaking, it would even be possible to nab the information without the user ever knowing that an attack had occurred. Halvar Flake also assisted with the hack, and he said that while Apple does have some protection in place for running malicious code on the iPhone, but it's not enough: "The way they implement code-signing is too lenient." You can see more technical information about the hack over on his blog. The hackers aren't sharing exactly how they did the exploit -- as specified by the contest rules, knowledge of the hack is becoming property of the contest's sponsor, the Tipping Point Zero Day Initiative, who will pass on a report to Apple and only release details once the hole has been fixed. Safari and Internet Explorer 8 both got owned at the same conference, though details about those hacks are both forthcoming -- Tipping Point was offering up US$100,000 in prizes for exploits on these various programs, and it looks like the prize money has been well-earned.
Sonic fans remix Sonic 4 intro, get way too excited
Oh, Sonic fans. Every time a new Sonic is announced, you joke about not getting fooled again and you promise that, this time, you won't be taken in. And we believe you -- why would you go back to Sonic after everything he's done to you? But then a few weeks go by, and suddenly we click a link and find you remixing the 10 seconds of intro screen music that's been revealed from Sonic 4. Seriously? Did you have to create a rock version, an 8-bit version and even a Dreamcast-style version? Sure, they're cool, and sure, we've embedded them after the break, but isn't this exactly the kind of excitement we all agreed we wouldn't have for the new game? Yes, we're glad to see that longtime Sonic musician Jun Senoue has been announced as the composer for new game, and we're looking forward to hearing more music when the Sega blog releases it. But as your history teacher said, those who forget the past are doomed to repeat it. Let's wait until we play the game before we start remixing it 10 seconds at a time.
EVE Online blogger provides insight on alliance warfare in Dominion
Alliance warfare has always been a huge part of EVE Online's endgame PvP, with alliances fighting over resources, expanding their borders or just settling age-old political grudges. The Dominion expansion made sweeping changes to alliance warfare and the transition hasn't been easy on all the alliances. Since Dominion went live, it's been difficult to judge just how effective the expansion has been at revitalising territorial warfare or how alliances are using the new system. EVE Blogger Wensley has been involved in the recent war against CVA in Providence region and he's been posting some of the valuable insights he's gleaned on territorial warfare over at his blog Rifter Drifter. In part 1 of his series "Catch 22" on the most recent parts of the war, he details the reasoning behind CVA's territorial expansion from Providence into the Catch region. In part 2, Wensley describes the details of the actual war so far and provides some useful insights into the mechanics of territorial warfare. He suggests that since alliances now get to choose the rough time their systems are fought over by way of the new reinforcement timers, they should have picked a time zone that would be inconvenient for their enemies. Instead, they had set their reinforcement timer to their enemy's peak play time, allowing them to easily amass huge fleets for the attack. He goes on to blame CVA's poor performance on a lack of preparedness, suggesting that if they had gotten their fleet together and into the threatened system first, any lag occuring when enemy players jump in would have been in their favour. If you're following the war in Providence region or just interested in how territorial warfare is fought now in EVE, Rifter Drifter's on-going Catch 22 series is definitely worth a read.
White Knight Chronicles launch DLC ready to go
Sony made us wait a few years for a North American release of White Knight Chronicles, but it's not waiting at all to give us a chance to spend more money on the game -- the official Sony blog has news that the first DLC for the game will be out ASAP, offering up microtransactions for items to fill out the in-game "Georama" space, as well as a $4.99 "key" that will allow you to completely re-customize your character without having to start the game all over again. Of course, Sony guarantees that "there is PLENTY for you to work with in the game itself," but just in case you want to pay a little more of your hard-earned paycheck, Sony will be happy to take it. And finally, just in time for launch day, it's offered up a brand new trailer. That won't cost you anything but a click on the link below, as it's available to watch after the break. [Via VG247]
Star Trek Online official dev blog: Jeremy Mattson
Today marks the first of this week's three exclusive developer blogs from Cryptic's Star Trek Online team here at Massively. For Monday, we've got Jeremy Mattson discussing what it's like being a Principal Artist for Cryptic and giving some insight into their powerful character customization tools. He also delves into the past a bit, which should interest any of you City of Heroes fans out there, too. Be sure to come back again on Wednesday for our second installment of this week's developer blogs. We'll have an animator's perspective of life at Cryptic and working on Star Trek Online.
White House releases official app for free
The White House (as in, the home of the American President Barack Obama) has introduced a brand new iPhone app, according to White House blogger Dave Cole. The app is a one-stop shop for everything there is to know about what the president's up to, including blog posts, a newsroom, photos, videos, and even live feeds from various events, including speeches and even press room briefings. It's actually pretty darn impressive -- obviously you're only going to get official White House news, but if you want uncut video of the goings on over there, you've got it. The app is a free download [iTunes link], and in my short hands-on with it, it worked very well -- the updates come often, the video is crisp and clean, and while I didn't get to view any of the live feeds, I presume they'll work just fine over a solid 3G or Wi-Fi connection. If you want direct access to official White House news, this app is perfect. [via Engadget]
Squarespace hosting/CMS service launches iPhone app
After a long wait, Squarespace customers finally have an iPhone app of their own. Squarespace is a hosted blogging/CMS service that competes with the likes of WordPress.com and Typepad. Having used all three, I can say that interacting with Squarespace (posting, changing your site's look and feel, etc.) is unlike the others. Instead of a separate control panel/dashboard, Squarespace previews changes in real time on the same screen. It's really nice. The iPhone app [iTunes link] seems to be an extension of its browser-based sibling. For example, check out the live preview mode pictured at right. You can also manage multiple accounts, post, upload multiple images at once (awesome) view stats and more. The UI looks nice as well. While bloggers on other platforms have had compatible apps in the App Store for a while now, this is Squarespace's first solution. We're eager to play around with it. Squarespace for iPhone is free and requires a paid Squarespace account.
Redefining MMOs: Have your say
Back in July, we started our Redefining MMOs series of articles to explore how the MMO genre has been redefined during the current generation of games and where it's headed in the next. Each of us here at Massively contributed our own unique perspectives on various topics, from those first articles on the terminology we use to refer to MMOs and the importance of lore to the latest article where developers weighed in with their opinions. Developers from several major MMO development studios discussed the term "MMO", what they think it means now and whether it's time for a new word. It's been an exciting series of articles for us to write and we hope you've enjoyed reading it. Many of you have already been inspired to comment on the articles and discuss your views on each topic. Your comments have given us a great deal of cause for thought and before we wrap up this popular series, we'd love to hear more of your thoughts. If you've ever wanted to get your opinions on the MMO genre in the spotlight, this is your chance. Simply write your own Redefining MMOs article on your own blog or website and drop the link in the comments. We'll announce our favourite reader submission next week and give them pride of place in next week's final wrap-up article. Skip past the cut for our full submission guidelines.
How to get your blog crashed by WoW.com
Every day, our tip line gets a number of requests for link exchanges, publicity, and feedback on whether a post would be good for inclusion in the Daily Quest. We're really happy to be able to direct traffic to bloggers with good information, but sometimes we get requests that leave us baffled, uncomfortable, or both. While it's pretty easy to deal with some of these (gold-selling sites wishing to advertise here are a quick, "No thanks"), some of them come from otherwise well-meaning bloggers who want a link, but who may not get the desired results from one. Naturally this leaves us with a bit of a dilemma, and these are the things I think about while nosing around incoming links and my own list of favorite blogs:Please don't ask us to link your blog. Ask us to link a post.Even if we love your site and we read it all the time, we still need a reason to link you that's relevant to a subject we're writing about. Readers dislike getting recommendations like "It's a great blog!" or "You're going to love it!" Uh, why is it a great blog? Why should they love it? Nothing speaks so loudly or effectively as a great post on a good topic. Moreover, if we're linking a post of yours, your blog's main page should be linked as well. Even if we got dumb and forgot, it should be a simple matter for readers to find your central page (and you've got a design problem on your hands if they can't).
DC Universe teases their Comic-Con exclusive poster
Who does this lovely face belong to? That's for you to decide as DC Universe Online teases their exclusive San Diego Comic-Con poster on their Myspace blog.The full poster, which will be given out to anyone who visits the DCUO booth at Comic-Con, hasn't been revealed just yet. However, according to bad puns placed on official blogs, we will be "clawing" to get our hands on one. Catwoman? Huntress? (We're voting for Catwoman, personally.) Either way, it looks like another iconic hero will be revealed and confirmed as appearing in the final game. Now all we have to do is barge our way into Comic-Con, use our ingenious grapple guns to swing over across the convention floor, and then steal all of the posters so no one will ever know who the new hero is. Then that will lead into our plans for world domination... oh, wait, we probably shouldn't have blogged that out loud.Um, er... Who do you guys think it is?
The (lack of) reality in the Caverns of Time
I've always considered the Caverns of Time to be like the theme park of Azeroth -- as we've discussed before, there aren't really any reasons to go to some of those instances in the first place, and the whole thing seems just so ludicrous. If we wipe, or we don't go in there, and Thrall isn't able to escape Durnholde or Arthas isn't able to murder Stratholme or any of the other premises they have set up, then wouldn't the world as we know it change? It seems like fan service -- Blizzard wants us to visit these great parts of lore, and it just seems to me like they've cooked up a weak story around getting us there.Which is why I was surprised to read this post over on Mystic Chicanery. They argue that the Caverns of Time are actually the most "real" of all the instances in the game. If we go into Utgarde Pinnacle, for example, and murder King Ymiron, there's no reason why he should be in there again the next time we head in. And yet he is -- we can go in and murder him time and time again, doing the same thing, and getting loot every single time. But in CoT, there's a logical explanation for why the instances are always the same: to the people we're encountering in the instances, it's the first time we've met them. From the outside world, the CoT instances may seem strange (the first time I was in Durnholde, we wiped with Thrall, and I jokingly checked with my guild to see if Thrall was still standing in Orgrimmar, alive and well -- he was), but inside the continuity of those instances, they work.Of course, we do still get different loot from it every time, as the MC post notices. But it is quite a thought: even though the Caverns of Time instances are the ones in the game that seem to least need us messing around in there, they also might just be the most logical.
Blogatelle signs off
One more major WoW-related blog has closed its doors. Too Many Annas, among others, notes that Blogatelle has called it quits, saying that Sean and Jess over there both feel they've come to the point where they've run out of things to say. While the blog itself is definitely a nice achievement -- it was an excellent blog centered on roleplaying (we've mentioned it before here on the site as an excellent resource for RPers) -- they will unfortunately leave a number of series behind, including the Katafray project, which followed a roleplaying Paladin up through the levels in Azeroth. As Anna says, they definitely deserve a hat tip, both for giving the RP community a solid and steady blogging voice, and for being accessible enough to bring in new RPers.This closing follows the shuttering of a few other WoW blogs lately, most famously those of BRK and Resto4Life. You might say three is a trend, sure, but on the other hand, we've seen a lot of blogs and podcasts grow as well lately. Four years in, there are going to be all kinds of people in the community, in all kinds of places regarding their interest to the game. Anyone who sees a few bloggers step away to do other things and cites it as a sign that the game is on its last legs needs to keep looking. We're sorry to lose some popular bloggers, but it sure looks from here like the community is stronger than ever.
Twinked-out NPCs in patch 3.2 thrill twinks
As expected, the twink enthusiasts over at TwinkInfo are supremely excited about that experience switch coming in patch 3.2 -- not only are they finally getting to stop XP gains on demand, but Blizzard has given them their own little easter egg in the game. We already knew the two NPCs with the switch for each faction were called Behsten in Stormwin and Slahtz in Orgrimmar (get it? "Best in slots?"), but now that the PTR is open, they've discovered something else: the NPCs themselves are twinked out with classic Rogue twink gear. From the Blackened Defias Chest to the Feet of the Lynx (and dual Assassin's Blades with Lifestealing), Blizzard went all out on these guys. As Drayner says, the only thing missing is a 'chanted Fishing Hat.Not everybody is big on twinking -- lots of people think it's annoying to duck into the BGs for the first time and get rolled by an alt who's got a lot of money and time behind them. Fortunately, though, this XP change will not only legitimize twinking even more, but it'll get it out of our way as well, as players with XP turned off will only face other players with XP turned off (other twinks, essentially). Throw in that it's something twinks have been asking for a long time, and it's a win-win for everybody.Patch 3.2 will bring about a new 5, 10, and 25 man instance to WoW, and usher in a new 40-man battleground called the Isle of Conquest. WoW.com will have you covered every step of the way, from extensive PTR coverage through the official live release. Check out WoW.com's Guide to Patch 3.2 for all the latest!
