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Chat live during the iPad 3G release
You waited, you waited, and you waited. And now some of you finally got your new iPad 3G. Sure, most of you had to remain patient while us Wi-Fi owners preened and showed off our new babies. And some of you are still waiting for the next ship date (the "arrives by" in May). For some of you, though, your "magical" treasure is now on hand. Whether you're waiting or a happy new owner, please join us to ask questions about your new iPad, or just share your iPad buying experience. This live TUAW community events will let you jumpstart your ownership experience and connect to other new 3G (and, yes, Wi-Fi) owners. Want to review the chat? Click the link below to read!
Philosony: Home from the holidays
Like many of you I've spent the holidays traveling to and visiting with friends and family. Though this afforded me ample free time with which to re-connect with my PSP (and finally get into Jeanne D'Arc), it also meant bidding adieu to my very unportable PS3. For several evenings prior to leaving I milled around in Home, trying to strike up a conversation, channeling my inner Dude, and avoiding the temptation to Quincy. I was genuinely interested in trying to make Home a social platform, a place to meet other people and chat about life, the universe, and maybe - though not necessarily - games.It didn't work so well.Home, like many other things on and about the PS3, seems to invoke highly polarized reactions among critics and players. I've seen it on recent end-of-the-year lists as both one of the best applications and biggest disappointments of 2008. As the holidays are one of the few occasions I get to re-connect (and game) with a real-life social network that I've developed over the years I spent some time with them ruminating over why I don't have anything close to this kind of network of friends on the PSN and whether Home could provide it. Basically, before making any judgments about what Home lacks or where it fails to live up to expectations we need to really think about the question: what do we want out of Home?
Final Fantasy XI devs threaten players with forced server moves
Server populations in massively multiplayer online games can be a delicate balancing act. Popular servers are very much the hubs of these games, where players can easily forge bonds with one another in a lively social environment. But log into a desolate server and you'll wonder what the point of playing an MMO is when there's no one else around. Many developers try to balance server populations by offering free server transfers, and sometimes bonuses of one type or another as a reward for making the jump. This has been an issue for developer Square Enix with Final Fantasy XI and the overcrowded Odin server. However, their efforts to disperse the crowds have been unsuccessful, leading them to take a more drastic measure: forced emigration. FFXI-centric website Petfoodalpha suggests that Square Enix's deportation solution (or alternately, world splitting) creates more problems than it solves. Fusionx writes, "Surely there has to be a better way to deal with this than randomly distributing people from the server to others. Friendships would be broken, linkshells would be destroyed. More importantly though for Square Enix: They would lose subscribers." When a developer identifies a high server population as being a problem, and when players don't take advantage of free server transfers or other incentives, do the devs really have any other choice but to take away choice?
The Daily Grind: Is the real draw of MMOs the company you keep?
One of the main things that keeps us playing MMOs are the communities that populate them. While some players can, and do, play their chosen game solo, for most it's the social component of these titles that pulls us away from those stunning graphics of consoles games and RPG titles for the PC. By comparison, while they're beautiful, many of those games seem 'empty' after having spent time with a massively multiplayer title.Communities in whatever form they take -- be it a guild, alliance, or corporation -- are essential to the success of an MMO, but interest in playing a given title can wane over time. Likewise with the social aspects of these titles, tempers can flare and patience wears thin. Sometimes you find you just don't have that much in common with the people you're playing with and it's time to move on. Bearing that in mind, are the people you choose to play with in your MMO of choice the same people you started out with? Do you see any parallels between how the company you keep in-game changes over time and how your real-life relationships with friends is always changing?
Recommending MMOs to friends
In his latest weekly column for GameSetMatch, Simon Parkin talks to the friend who took over his Final Fantasy XI account when he moved on from the game. Since he sent her his account information and deleted the game from his hard drive, he has been nagged by a feeling of guilt. Did he ruin her life by introducing her to the time-sucking grind of MMOs? He discovered that while she does spend large amounts of time in the game, she is happy for the time she has invested. She has made lasting friendships within the game and while she would not try other games, she doesn't regret her adventures in Vana'diel.Most of us find a balance between the total immersion of these virtual worlds and the demands of real life. And many real life friendships come from time spent in-game, which should be no surprise given that most relationships spring from common interest. On the other hand, we all know someone who spends far too much time in our shared worlds to be healthy.So here's the question: knowing how enjoyable MMOs can be, but also knowing that they have the potential to take over one's life, how comfortable are you in recommending them to your friends?
Gonna try with a little help from my friends...
As much as players and designers have lauded the Massively Multiplayer genre for being the social future of gaming, allowing players from disparate geographic and sociological backgrounds to come together in a virtual space to accomplish goals together, they're often still very anti-social experiences. As Van Hemlock explored in a blog post recently, the City of Heroes series is really one of the few games out there that let players of disparate levels play together in a meaningful experience.In some ways, its strange that more games don't offer the same kind of Sidekick/Exemplar system, where players can have their attributes raised or lowered to an appropriate level to be able to play with friend. As Van Hemlock discusses, part of it has to do with the way the CoX battle systems work. By working with relative percentages instead of absolute values, it's easier to tweak content difficulty by level. But some of it also just seems like willful disregard for how much more difficult keeping up in-game friendships is when you level at different rates. In any case, we were delighted to see that Age of Conan has its own sort of apprentice system already in place, and we hope it becomes the trend in the future.
All the World's a Stage: Wearing the right mask
One of the most common difficulties many roleplayers face is that of finding other people to roleplay with. To help overcome this challenge, All the World's a Stage presents a guide to finding roleplayers in three parts: "finding the right realm" for roleplaying, "joining the right circle" of roleplaying friends, and "wearing the right mask" to attract other roleplayers to you. Your face is the first thing people notice about you when you go out into the world. Quite rightly, most of us put a lot of effort into making our faces look clean, healthy, and happy much of the time. Some people even go so far as to think of their faces as masks which they can use to alternately hide or reveal their true feelings to the world as each situation requires.When you roleplay, your character is the mask you wear in a world where your real face doesn't matter at all - it defines who you are within this fantasy world and it determines how others will react to you as one of its denizens. Likewise, it deserves its proper amount of attention, like the care you give your outward appearance for your real life interactions. The method of caring for it is different of course, but the spirit and intention is the same.Roleplayers have certain conventions you can use to quickly identify yourself as one interested in interacting with them. But more important than these is your attitude: just as the way you stand, smile, or keep yourself clean are all more important than the actual look of your face in real life; so, in roleplaying, a humble manner, a friendly approach, and a confident integrity are all essentials, whereas things like race, class, funny quirks and accents are all merely supporting elements.
All the World's a Stage: Oh the drama! -- When to "/ignore"
All the World's a Stage is a weekly column by David Bowers, published on Sunday evenings, investigating the explorative performance art of roleplaying in the World of Warcraft.We've talked before about roleplaying as an art form, whether you think about it as acting or puppeteering, fiction or improv, there's definitely something creative going on here. But like any art form, roleplaying is best when it means something; that's to say, when it expresses something ultimately "true" about human experience, and perhaps even illumines the minds and hearts of the roleplayers in some way.Roleplayers all want to achieve that creativity, of course, but one problem often stands in our way: it's a rare work of art that really works for everyone. That's why the regular old art world is such a complete mess -- one man's fingerpainting is another man's post-modernist masterpiece. People constantly disagree about what subjects make for acceptable art, whether some art pushes extremes too far and becomes obscenity, and whether real art actually requires talent and skill. One person may curl up with their favorite Jane Austen novel and read it for the 10th time, while another may come home from the comic book store with the epic adventures of the Bone cousins. Each story conveys very different things to the reader -- but then the people who want to read these stories are looking for different things to get out them as well. Each form of storytelling speaks its own language for its own special audience.We have the same problem in roleplaying. To illustrate, imagine there's a teenage boy going through public school and not getting along with his peers very well. When he roleplays, he plays an intimidating character who likes to try to get in your face, pick a fight with you and insult you to show how very powerful he is. That power fantasy may be very annoying for you and me, but for him it really means something. That's not to say it's high-quality art by any means, but nonetheless, his feelings are important too, and he has his right to play a character on an RP server the same way we all do. It's just that for us, the "/ignore" command starts to look really tempting every time his sort comes along.
GlowBots develop relationships, express emotions via LEDs
Although we can't deny that having a household humanoid that chases away intruders would be a welcome member to most families, a team of individuals more focused on actual "complex relationships" have developed a series of bots that can learn and express emotions via lights. GlowBots are wee wheeled creatures that "develop attractive patterns that are affected both by user interaction and communication between the robots," meaning that the days of expensive animal training in order to have a pet around are nearly through. The technology within is based on an open experimental robot platform, dubbed e-Puck, and the actual robots utilize "eight IR proximity sensors, a camera, a trio of microphones, three-axis accelerometer, a speaker, two stepper motors, Bluetooth interface, a number of LEDs, a PIC micro controller, and a 12-step-mode selector" to confess their love. The creators will apparently be showing off their heartwarming invention at this year's SIGGRAPH conference, but until these suckas come sheathed in some sort of faux fur and fully equipped with bad breath, we're afraid Fido will retain control of the dog house for now.[Via PastaAndVinegar]
