journey
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The Daily Grind: Should beta testers be allowed to keep their characters?
This is a pretty loaded issue, as it turns out. Obviously, the benefits to keeping your characters are manifold -- you start the live version of the game at a higher level than the rest; you likely have vastly better gear; you've already been through most of the lower-level quests, so can concentrate on the more lucrative epic lines, or just work on your PvP skills. But aside from the fact that you might find that this diminishes your enjoyment of the game, having already seen so much of it, is it fair to the new players?It's somewhat demoralizing to log in for the first time and immediately see high-level players goofing around, talking trash, and trading or selling the epic loot they have in abundance. It destroys the feeling that you're entering a strange, exciting new world, and reminds you that you're just playing a game, and people have already well-trod the ground you've never even seen. MMOs shouldn't be about racing to get to higher levels, but in a beta, it's easy to exploit early class imbalances to advance. In this case, the goal and the journey have become muddled, and for many, the traveling is just as important as the arrival.Some games do wipe their player bases when they're ready to release. Is this frustrating, or is it a good practice?
Don't stop believing; Journey's coming to Second Life
Mark February 1st, fans of the 80's: Journey will be opening their brand-new sim in Second Life, 'Journey Rock Band'. Personally, I'm surprised they didn't go with something more fan-relatable; I'd have called it 'Frontiers', or 'Wheel in the Sky', or, best of all, 'Kohoutek'. Throw the fans a bone, huh?Regardless, the opening will also feature a meet-and-greet with the band, though, of course, Steve Perry won't be there. The party starts at 10 AM SLT and will feature a DJ spinning, what else? Journey songs! I have to say, every SL party I've ever been to has featured at least 2 Journey songs, with shouts of 'ZOMG JOURNEY' and 'I LOVE THIS SONG', so this is a good fit. Hell, it's at least a slap in the face of Duran Duran, who never made good on their previous promise. And hey, where ARE Gorillaz?
WoW is a Work of Art, part 1: A journey into Azeroth
The day I walked into the store to buy World of Warcraft, I had been taking care of my mother as she underwent chemotherapy for brain cancer, and I desperately needed something to do that wasn't cooking, cleaning, sorting pills, or running errands. I needed something that would connect me with people while at the same time letting me stay at home and care for someone I loved.When I picked up a box with a pretty, yet severe night elf woman's face on the cover, I wasn't thinking, "I want to get to level 60 and start raiding Molten Core for epic gear!" or even "I'm going to be a PvP god!" Instead, I was hoping to create characters with a personal background, with feelings and ideas all their own, and act them out in an imaginary world where no one knew who I really was, a world in which our purpose was to share creatively and interact as a team, not to make money or exchange gossip.In short, I wanted to roleplay. But what I got was something much more than even a roleplaying experience, more than me and my characters, more than an endless stream of quests and rewards, experience and reputation, monsters and loot. I found myself in a world filled with its own people -- real people -- and a series of problems for these people to overcome together in order to progress and travel even deeper into this world. At every stage, I found something new opening up to me, whether it was access to more abilities of my own, more ways to interact with others, more vast landscapes to please my eye, or more stories to capture my imagination.
The quest for Autumn: Windows XP's elusive backdrop
It's no secret that people have been fascinated, or at least intrigued, by wallpapers and screensavers since the desktop first graced their eyes, and judging by the sheer multitude of websites and man-hours devoted to perfecting the screen that you so rarely see once you launch that first app, it's also no shock to hear a tale of such obsession. Although Autumn may not be most people's default background in Windows XP, it's still well regarded, and for one Vanity Fair writer, it sparked a worldwide quest to find its origin. Expecting the task to be one of relative ease in the age of email, meta tags, and digital archives, he began by questioning the usual suspects about its humble beginnings, but to his dismay, was turned down time and time again by rights protectors who wouldn't divulge the author nor location of such a highly prized stock photograph. Eventually, his entire team was onboard in a furious (albeit seemingly futile) search to discover precisely where this image was shot, once leading to thoughts of permanent relocation if the locale was finally unearthed. After what seemed like months of running into brick walls, an email to Bill Gates himself resulted in an apparently automated response that belted out nothing more but the snapshot's place of origin, which incited fits of jovial celebration office-wide. To Campbellville, Ontario, Canada they headed, in desperate need to visit the orangey area so burned into their memories, and thanks to the purportedly mysterious workings of a co-worker, they even landed the shooter's name. Eventually, the journey led them to a rarely traveled path in the city of Burlington, where the old Harris Homestead quietly sat behind a vigilant row of bare trees surrounded by glistening white snow. It truly was Winter, at last for the adventurous crew, but it certainly gives us pause when deciding whether or not to seek out the origin of Ascent and Azul in our spare time.
Blogging the switch to Mac OS X
I found another one of those 'switcher blogs' and I thought it might make an interesting read for both Mac newbies and power users. I honestly can't find any information on the author, but My Journey to Macintosh provides up some interesting switcher experiences, such as loading up Firefox just because that's what the author used on Windows, then discovering that other browsers like Camino offer a far more Mac OS X-like experience, in part because Camino isn't butt-ugly and it uses the Keychain.One thing I like about this blog is that the author seems to be a power user, of sorts; while some posts are about discovering the wonders of working with PDFs on a Mac without the need for Adobe's (fat, bloated, clunky, slow and horrible) Reader, another post laments some hangups in getting PHP and MySQL working. In other words: there's something for everyone!There isn't a virtual library of posts yet, but I thought it might be an interesting switcher blog to watch because of both the variety of topics the author has touched on so far, and an About section that reads: "Microsoft Windows user since Windows 3.0 moves to a Mac and Mac OS/X Tiger. Watch the process, good and bad :)." See? Fair and balanced, too. Enjoy.
