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Boobs! Sweeping changes coming to 1UP
As UGO's purchase of 1UP continues to send shock waves across the gaming landscape, details about what to expect under the site's new overlords have begun to emerge. Or rather, what we could have expected. 1UP's Scott Sharkey drops his synergistic ideas for a new site comprised of lists, boobs and lots of both. But alas, Scott's been promptly muzzled by his new handlers.Don't worry, though. Joystiq plans to "borrow" all of your fine ideas, Scott, for our new megasite: JoyDaily.com -- brought to you by AOL's TMZ!
Loot Council splits your loot up for you
Bonkers of Vek'nilash, creator of the very useful Gear Wishlist that we posted about a while back, has sent along a new site he's been working on called Loot Council. Basically, you throw the names of every character in your instance group into the system along with the name of the instance you're running, and you get a quick list of all the loot available from the instance and which character it's best for, according to class, need, and spec. You can use various rankings for the item, but eventually, all you have to do to determine who needs the item is look it up on the list and then see who has the biggest improvement from what they're wearing.Very useful, though this might not be quite as tough to figure out as getting gear for yourself: in most of my instance runs, it's usually pretty clear who gets/wants what. And if you do happen to be in a PuG where people don't understand why a certain stat is better for one class or spec than another, you're probably not going to get them to open up the webpage and follow what they see there.But for a quick no-brainer loot solution while instancing with a group of friends (especially in 25mans, where it's often tough to see who really needs an upgrade), it seems helpful and works well. Another great app from Bonkers.
Get a Mac, get a job
As the economy makes with the poop, we can all use a little bit of extra help finding work. Whether it's side projects, or full-time employment, there are plenty of jobs available for system administrators, programmers, and creative people -- all who use a Mac. I've assembled a collection of sites and job boards that cater to those with a technical and creative skill set -- people who probably use a Mac. This is by no means a complete list, but should help anyone starting to look for work. Comments consisting of "how could you dare possibly omit [insert name of board here]" will be met with resigned sighs from me, but cheers from our readers. So feel free to point people in the direction of boards that you've used or trusted before in comments. Follow me across the jump for the list.
Ten things I hate about Wrath Beta
Bah. Beta. Everything I read all over is Beta this, Beta that. There's so much praise going for Blizzard's upcoming Wrath of the Lich King expansion that it's about time we give it some rightful hate! That's right, I'm going to go through a nasty little list of all the things I hate about the Beta. 10. None of my AddOns workOk, well, some of them do. But since this is a Beta build, it's best to stay clear of any AddOns. I want to test the Beta build, which is unstable enough on its own, so any technical issues I experience will result in a GM telling me to scrap my WTF folder and toss out any AddOns, anyway. So I have to play without critical PvP AddOns like Afflicted or graphical idiosyncrasies like MetaHUD and fun stuff like ShaderMod. Of course, it also means I've got to re-import all my macros and reprogram my key bindings, which -- since I'm a lazy bum -- can be a chore.
What do you want play more: The Agency or Warhammer Online?
Ken Smith, writer for MSNBC's gaming section sure does crank out a bunch of Top 5 lists, some are ridiculously bad. In a more serious effort, The Agency is the only MMOG to rank on his "Top 5 Most Anticipated Games of 2008" list. Who cares, right? Tons do, well enough to say "your list sucks." Skimming through two hundred plus comments Warhammer Online received more votes than any other MMOG due to launch sometime this year. (Who knew MSNBC's gaming site was that popular?) Tapping into Massively's metrics I can tell you that Warhammer Online easily beats out The Agency in the war for eyeballs, but you know what other MMOG beats it? If you guessed World of Warcraft, you're wrong. Second Life currently holds the top spot. Don't worry, we'll be posting more and more about Warhammer Online and The Agency, more so after both games launch. As for the video above, if you've been keeping tabs on The Agency there isn't much new footage. Matt Wilson, the dev shown peddling the goods, claimed the team is still undecided on whether or not PS3 gamers will play with their PC counterparts on the same servers. John Smedley, SOE President, reiterated last month that it was unlikely given that it would give PC players an unfair advantage. Given the conflicting statements, I guess it's still up in the air, although, I'd go with Smed on this one. Smedley also reassured player accounts will be universal and not tied to a specific platform. As noted in the video, the game is still in alpha.
IGN snubs MMOs in top 100 games of all time list
What is it with lists? I recently harped on a G4 writer's most Epic Gaming Failures list; at numero uno the writer picked every MMOG since WoW. IGN's list is also another huge disappointment. The only MMORPG that made the cut was of course, World of Warcraft -- it ranks 83. Forget any of the pioneer MMOs that made it all possible, not even Ultima Online is found, nor is EverQuest recognized, which was the first graphical Diku-based MMOG to hit 500k subscriptions. Even great non-MMOGs like Morrowind and Oblivion weren't invited to the party. At least Mario Kart made it, which is personally one of my all time favs...With so many games to choose from picking the cream of the crop is going to stir up some controversy. But from what I gather from the list, very few editors at IGN even play MMOs beyond WoW, which is their loss. What I really guffaw at are the trolls, the haters, the dolts who truly accost MMOs as seen in this Digg thread. News flash: MMOGs aren't the only "waste-of-time." Anything entertainment based, or any hobby that isn't saving the real world from lava penguins (lolz) is considered as such, and can be a huge time sink if taken serious. Nick Yee, the research mastermind, has built-up quite a bit of empirical evidence that the average MMOG player spends 20 hours a week and the national average for television watching is 28 hours a week. Our hobbies are merely switched around and invested elsewhere.
G4 writer: Every MMOG since WoW is an epic failure
Insert "I pick whatever," and that list can be found on every webbed nook and seedy cranny. But this is the best list ever. Says Who? Anyone with a blog! Normally these lists are the opinions of one person, but the overall outlook is held to the site they scribble on. I don't remember taking a vote for "Massively's" Top 5 Sci-Fi MMOs," (although EVE would be my top pick) but it's possible other Massively writers voted. (You wouldn't believe how much we spam each other.) Well, this list by G4's Sjohnson entitled "Epic Fail: Gaming Failures" is turning a few heads. At the top of the heap, the writer boldly chooses the #1 failure as being: "Every North American MMO Since World of Warcraft." What? It gets better. To solidify their opinion Johnson uses the all-to-familiar Star Wars Galaxies debacle ("Don't NGE me bro!") and points to the mega flopped Sims Online. Both power-players with established franchises, and their own built-in fanbases that should have thawed out the Frozen Moses and blew the genre to smithereens. What about actual MMOGs that were released after World of Warcraft? Johnson failed to list one. Maybe his list would have been better titled, "Every MMO ever released except World of Warcraft." Lastly, World of Warcraft's 9 million total sub count is cool and all, but it doesn't mean a MMOG with 200k subs isn't successful in its own right. If you want to make a list about MMOG failures and base it on subs alone, it's only fair to include all those grindtastic ones based in Asia that have millions of subscriptions too. I wouldn't touch those MMOGs even if you imprisoned me on a gold farm with a thousand Natalie Portman cylons. (Wait a minute...) Still, I think these lists are fun and it leaves room for great debate. I want to know what you guys think. Has every single MMOG since World of Warcraft failed? Should LotRO have over a million subscriptions by now? What about the trouble regarding countless MMOG cancellations and delays over this past year-- is World of Warcraft to blame? Let us know in the comments.[via, Random Battle]
30 free MMOs
Do you love you the MMOs but don't have the cash for the subscriptions? Can't even afford to purchase the games themselves? Well, you're in luck, because Mashable just posted about 30 MMOs that won't cost you a dime, unless of course you count the electricity it costs to run your computer in order to play the games. Oh, is nothing free anymore?Most of these games I've heard of, a handful of them I even have accounts to, and one in particular is demanding more and more of my time. But there are a couple on this list I haven't encountered as of yet, so I might take some time over the next few weeks and see if I can introduce myself to them. Hello, how are you, will you be the next game to take over my life?
LGC07: German journalists, experts pick all-time most influential games
A gathering of German journalists, publishers and "experts" met at this year's Leipzig Games Convention to pick what they felt were the most influential games of all time (via GameSetWatch). Of the reported 150 nominations, 16 titles were ultimately chosen and, of those, four were noted for being most frequently noted.The four top-honored games are Tetris, Pong, Doom and Pac-Man. Though we agree with much of the list, we're still left feeling some titles were unfortunately overlooked (e.g. E.T., Custer's Revenge). What do you think of the list?See Also: 10 most important video games of all time, as judged by 2 designers, 2 academics, and 1 lowly blogger[Image credit: Senechaux]
PackRat 1.2: Backpack client adds better list management and a new trial period
Going on vacation to see your just-born nephew and family will do funny things to you, like missing a handy update to a dear, dear application. Rod Schmidt's PackRat, the killer desktop client for the online PIM Backpack that we've mentioned once or twice, has been updated to v1.2 with some great new list management features. First up is yet another feature even Backpack itself doesn't have: a new 'Delete all completed items' option that appears below lists with items you've checked off. Second is another PackRat-only feature: condensing of your completed items. Instead of allowing checked items to take up more room than they should below a list, PackRat will automatically hide them and only reveal the top 5, with the option to reveal all just in case you need to double-check or recover a few.In addition, Rod has also switched to a 30 day trial period (instead of limiting to only 4 usable PackRat pages), after which PackRat will restrict access to 5 pages until the user purchases a license. At $24.95, PackRat is an easy purchase for anyone who needs a powerful, feature-packed offline and synching client for 37signal's exception Backpack service.
Listz - a powerful organizer with rich media, iPod exporting and more
Getting organized is all the rage lately, what with an endless sea of GTD apps, todo Dashboard widgets and Growl alarm systems. There is certainly something to be said about making a list and checking it twice - especially when your list offers Google Maps in a mouseover popup window, a Dashboard widget, individual alarms, syncing across Macs, iPod exporting and much, much more. Listz is just such an app, and it is absolutely slammed with features. It even offers backup burning to disc, tabbed lists, extensive styling options, drag and drop support, categorizing list items, and support for printing lists if you aren't bringing your little white or black (or green, or red...) sidekick. But all this functionality comes at a price that is likely to appeal only to the power list'ers in the crowd: Listz sells for $39.95. It isn't the cheapest organization app I've ever seen, but it very well might be one of - if not the - most functional, especially with those slick rich media mouse-over popups. The only way to tell for sure, of course, is to download a demo for yourself and try it out.
Exclusive games FTW! How do 360, PS3 & Wii stack up?
In the console wars, exclusive games are the weapons of mass destruction. Without them, what fanboy would dare launch a forum fit against his sworn enemies? Gaming Target's regularly updated list charts the number of exclusives available on each of the Big Three's latest. Handheld systems aren't included, nor are downloadable games.The results show that, aided by a one-year head start on the market, Xbox 360 is clearly in the lead with 80 exclusive titles, just over half of which are unreleased. Wii comes in second with 53, and PlayStation 3 trails with just 39 exclusives. If the current trends continue, Xbox 360 will continue to steal away its share of previously PS3-only games (Metal Gear Solid 4 and Final Fantasy XIII, we're looking at you), while the Wii gets plump with PS2 remakes and wacky Wiimote games.Even if you included each console's downloadable games service, the pecking order probably wouldn't change. Xbox 360 has a modest collection of exclusives available on Xbox Live Arcade and the Wii Virtual Console (do oldies count as exclusives?) is growing rapidly -- PlayStation Network not so much. But remember, a stockpile of WMDs isn't the only deciding factor in a console war.
Blizz Prez Mike Morhaime, #4 on PC World's Most Important People on the Web
As you might imagine, we here at WoW Insider love World of Warcraft. It's the greatest thing to come along since at least Diablo. Blizzard is a great company, and when it comes to computer gaming, you could solidly make the argument that nobody does it better than they do.But when PC World announced their "Most Important People on the Web" list today, I was surprised to see, right there in between the inventor of Bittorrent and Jimbo Wales of Wikipedia, Mike Morhaime, President of Blizzard Entertainment as the 4th Most Important Person on the Internet (a big jump up from a previous list). PC World cites WoW's huge player base and Blizzard's profits of $1.5 billion a year (not to mention all the money floating around WoW's black market services), but does the president of a videogame company really deserve to be two slots down from Steve Jobs, in between the man who basically created an anonymous peer-to-peer sharing system and the man who's developing the definitive online collection of knowledge?Call me cynical, but I say no. WoW may have influence over a lot of people, but Blizzard is using that influence to nerf druids and tweak raid bosses, not affect the Internet population. Then again, the guy did appear in animated form on South Park, and Jimbo Wales has never done that. We should all know by now that these lists are just a cheap way of encouraging discussion (and attention), but Morhaime's inclusion on the list means that WoW's ascent into our culture isn't done yet.
Microsoft copied the only iPod they could
John Gruber has penned an interesting observation of how Microsoft might very well have missed the mark from the get-go when they made the strange decision to take on the iPod and iTunes. Since the player's initial wiz-bang sales period is essentially over (as in: it more or less set a decent sales barometer, at least for now), John wrangles some interesting statistics from Amazon's charts on exactly where the Zune stands in comparison to Apple's players (including year-old models), as well as its ranking in the overall electronics category. To spoil the surprise: the Zune isn't doing so well. We've looked at Amazon's charts before, but as of this writing, a record player is beating out the best selling Zune on the electronics list, while iPods - specifically the small, flash-based nano and shuffle - dominate most of the top 10 spots.John then uses this data and good ol' fashioned people watching to conclude that Microsoft shouldn't have taken what could be their only swing at the plate in producing a hard drive-based iPod; they should have cranked out a flash memory model to go head-on with the nano - inarguably the home run slugger in Apple's lineup. While I tend to agree with John, I also see a problem with going down this road: Microsoft would likely have had even less room to maneuver, and even fewer things to market ('Beam your tunes') and invent lame, dead-end lingo for - they actually refer to sharing your music wirelessly as 'squirting'. Who wants to bet how excited Steve Ballmer's kids are to 'squirt' at school?Sure, when you look at what you're up against in the DAP market, Apple's iPod nano and SanDisk's respectable 2GB Sansa player (expandable via an SD slot, and at #11 on Amazon as of this writing) are the top dogs to beat - but what could they have offered? I highly doubt they could have fit their DRM-crippled and arguably worthless (though admittedly buzz-worthy) Wi-Fi sharing feature into a nano-sized player, even if they made it slightly larger and uglier like the Zune is to its 30GB iPod rival. A 'Zune nano' with nothing unique to offer would dry up on its own in a market already dominated by Apple, SanDisk and Creative, and Microsoft's exclusive, 3rd party bitch-slap of a music store would have even less of a leg to stand on.In summary: I think John's right - Microsoft made a bad move in copying the 30GB hard drive-based iPod, but it was the only move they had. In this light, it kinda makes you wonder why they bothered in the first place.
Worst worst games ever list ever
PC World has slapped up a list of the ten worst video game ever created. The list includes some obvious choices, including the over-produced (ET), the over-hyped (Daikatana) and the basketball-star-over-exposing (Shaq Fu). It also includes some rather surprising choices.While most of the games on the list are there for obvious gameplay flaws, the justifications for many of the listings seem kind of trivial. Super Columbine RPG is excoriated not for bad game design, but mainly because the game's web site is "some sort of crime against good design itself" (and the fact that the authors consider the game's content "appalling"). Prince of Persia: The Warrior Within makes an appearance despite receiving an 84% average on GameRankings (the justification? It changed a lot from Sands of Time and it was popular). And the obscure Nintendo DS and web-download game Elf Bowling is castigated for clogging up e-mail servers and getting old after a few plays (Were they expecting some sort of epic RPG?)The seven runners-up include more games that seem to be included solely because of violent content (Death Race 2000, Postal) political content (The Howard Dean for Iowa Game) or, um, educational content (The Typing of the Dead). Sure, these games aren't going to make any top ten lists, but are they really worse than totally unplayable clunkers like Charlie's Angels, or Ping Pals?
Software every college student needs
Willie Morris has put together a list of Mac software that he calls 'Crucial Mac Software: College Edition.' The list has lots of great software on it (including the fantastic Quicksilver), but I have one problem with that list. What makes it college specific? Other than including Microsoft Office (and not even the student edition) I don't see any applications that would be uniquely useful for college students.Perhaps I'm an old so and so and I just don't 'get' the kids anymore. College students (and I know are some of you out there reading TUAW) let me know what applications you can't live without in the comments.[via Digg]
Maxim lists top game toilets
Sometimes it seems like anything video-game related that can be listed has been listed. Games, weapons, underused franchises, bad dialog... there are so many that we've even done a list of lists.But just when you think there are no more listable things out there, Maxim comes along and puts together a list of the top ten in-game toilets.That's right. Toilets.Each virtual commode is ranked on realism and cleanliness, and includes a short scatological summary of its crapper characteristics. We won't spoil the number one pick here, but let's just say it's a game that features someone known for his potty mouth.[Thanks, Scott]
Question for gaymers: Is the 360 lacking diversity?
GayGamer.net's list of the "Top 20 Gayest Video Game Characters" has created a firestorm of interest around the web -- enough to crash their server several times throughout the day. Looking over the list, you'll notice that there are no characters from an Xbox 360 game. Cloning Clyde doesn't even get an honorable mention, despite conquering single sex reproduction. I ask this only to atone for past slurs and innuendos: Is the 360 lacking diversity? Note: Before the post police get on my...uh..ass, "gaymers" seems to be an accepted self-identifying term in the homosexual video game community. Deal with it.
Top Ten Most Beautiful Mac OS X Applications
Top ten lists are all the rage recently and Phillip Ryu gives us a unique one--the top ten most beautiful applications for Mac OS X. He's got a nice write-up and I agree with most of his choices. 10. Transmission9. Voice Candy8. Podcast Maker7. Transmit6. Quinn5. AppZapper4. Acquisition3. Coverflow2. Newsfire1. Delicious LibraryI would add to his list RapidWeaver and Comic Life, both programs that have impressed me with their ease-of-use and well-designed user interfaces. What apps would you add in your own top ten list of most beautiful Mac OS X applications?
New Packrat version adds true list and note creation
A new Packrat version (version 0.84 build 220) has enabled 100% edit-ability of lists and notes on pages, including the create of new lists and notes on pages that previously had none. To facilitate this, a new 'Action' button has been added to Packrat's toolbar, containing 'create new note/list' commands for your productivity pleasure.To find out more about the update, check the blog of Rod Schmidt, Packrat's developer.
