female-armor
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Shroud of the Avatar presents founder town home and female armor
If you wanted to be the envy of all of your virtual friends by living in the swankiest house in the neighborhood, chances are that you chipped in to become a founder for Shroud of the Avatar. Assuming that this is the case, the devs have a few impressive interior and exterior screenshots of the Founder Lord Town Home to show you. After all, who wouldn't want to live in a castle in their neighborhood? This latest update of the developing game also includes pictures of the Benefactor Edelmann Village Home and a sneak peek at what leather and plate armor looks like on female avatars. For once in a fantasy RPG, these actually look sensible instead of steel lingerie, so applause all around.
Free for All: My favorite female armor sets
Of all of the crazy characters from HBO's Game of Thrones, Brienne is easily my favorite. Why is she my favorite? It's not because she's just heroic or brave or any of the things that people often attribute to her; it's because she's a survivor. Much of that survival comes from her armor and the fact that she knows well enough to be able to protect herself! The actress Gwendoline Christie has talked about how uncomfortable the armor is to wear. I've heard the producers say that the metal skin is supposed to look sort of mismatched, and I love that. It only makes it stronger. I often wish MMOs represented armor in better ways, especially for female characters. Some MMOs do a better job than others, and some MMOs do a decent job some of the time. Here are some of my picks for my favorite armor sets for female humans, orcs, goblins or... well, you get the point. (Please don't post Game of Thrones spoilers in the comments section.)
SOE shows off PlanetSide 2 fem-troopers
Who says PlanetSide 2 is going to be a dude fest? OK, it might be, but at least it'll have some nifty female avatar options. Sony Online Entertainment is also thumbing its nose at game industry tradition when it comes to clothing women in skimpy combat attire. The company's latest press release features renders and screenshots of fem-troopers in full battle gear. There's neither a bare belly nor a shapely thigh in sight, just functional equipment designed to keep avatars alive rather than stimulate opponents. Check out our PS2 gallery below for examples from all three factions. [Source: SOE press release] %Gallery-127964%
What makes a bad word bad?
Warning: This post may contain language that is offensive to some. Our own Fox Van Allen tackled the subject of the odd quirks of the mature language filter last week -- the fact that some objectionable words have been mysteriously left out of the filter, while others of a much less objectionable nature have oddly been left in it. None of this was noticed of course until the mature language filter was bugged so that it reset itself, resulting in a lot of people spewing a lot of random keyboard symbols until they remembered to turn it off again. Personally? I'm not sure if the mature language filter is at all an effective tool. Since the first days of WoW, Horde and Alliance players have not been allowed to speak to each other. Part of this was because of faction separation, but part of it was to discouraging griefing, which happened all the time in PvP situations. Players of the opposing faction could kill you repeatedly, but they couldn't swear at you -- until, that is, players realized they could communicate with keyboard symbols arranged into letters. This ability was soon squashed. And that's the problem, isn't it? It doesn't matter how much you block a word. If someone is determined to have their say, they will find a way to say it. If you can't talk to the opposing faction, you roll an alt and cuss them out that way, or over voice chat, or via email, or on Twitter, or wherever they can conveniently contact you. So why try blocking it at all? More importantly, what makes a bad word "bad," anyway?
The Perfect Ten: Weird staples of every fantasy MMO
If you take some weird, outlandish, or out-of-the-ordinary item and then saturate your life with it, sooner or later the bizarre becomes the accepted norm. So much so, in fact, that you'd cease to even think about it. I mean, do we ever question those magic boxes known as "microwaves" that mysteriously heat up our foods? Does anyone blink twice anymore when small computers tell us how to drive instead of nagging spouses? What about Carrot Top? Likewise, fantasy MMORPGs have erected trope after trope that we no longer question -- or even notice. Actually, the only time we'd notice one of these is if a game failed to include it. No matter how illogical and sometimes silly these MMO staples are when you think about them, we've been around them so long that we would no more notice them as we would the individual keyboard buttons that we type on daily. Still... you're thinking about them right now, aren't you? Those keys, cruelly dominated by your pecking fingers, pushing them back into place. What a techno-bully you are! In any case, come with us as we count down 10 weird staples that every fantasy MMO seems to include.
