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It came from the Blog: Love is in the Blog
Love is in the air and that means it's time for another It came from the Blog get-together: When: 5:30pm EST (2:30pm PST, 3:30pm realm time) Saturday, February 13 2010 (Show up at 5pm EST for the Meet and Greet) Where: Court of the Sun fountain, Silvermoon City Zangarmarsh U.S. Who: Any Horde character, any level. What: Love is in the Air daily quests. How: Ask Robinator, Robiness or any It came from the Blog Lurker or above for an invite to the guild. As you can see, we are also going to be having a pre-event mixer. Many of our bloggers will be showing up for a meet and greet a half an hour before the event. They will be chatting with readers and posing for photos to be posted on the site. So show up early if you wish to hangout with some of the WoW.com staff. If you have any questions about It came from the Blog, like why Horde or why U.S., please see our FAQ. We hope to see you there!
Fool for Love just got easier
Love is in the Air on most servers by now, and players should notice a substantial change in the way the event is being run this year. No longer do you have to furtively log on each hour on the hour during the course of the event in the hopes that you'll get that candy bag with that ONE piece of candy you need for the Be Mine! achievement. The candy bag, as well as all other random rewards from previous years are available on vendors in each capital city, and purchased with Love Tokens. How do you get the tokens? Well, you certainly don't have to run around begging people to give you cards and building gifts. This year, the tokens are available through daily quests. Since it's the first day of the event, we may not have seen all of the possible dailies, but here's the rundown on two of them: Remember the Gifts of Adoration? This year, faction leaders are looking for jewelry. You can turn in a Lovely Charm Bracelet to the faction leader of your choice for a Lovely Card that will give you an hour long buff, and 5 Love Tokens. The method used to obtain these bracelets? Kwee will give you a Lovely Charm Collector's Kit with the following flavor text: "Pliers, bone saw, scalpel and sundry other tools allow for the collection of Lovely Charms from worthwhile enemies. Collect 10 charms to make a bracelet!" Yes, you read that correctly. You murder beasts and creatures in your level range, and hack Lovely Charms off of their corpses. I'm thinking I love this event already. Other ways to obtain Love Tokens include the daily quest "A Perfect Puff of Perfume," which requires you to hose down ten players or NPC's with perfume. Vendors and city guards will work just as well as other players, so don't worry about running out of people to spray. This quest will also earn you 5 tokens. The changes so far to the event make it much, much simpler to get that coveted Fool For Love meta achievement, and should provide a welcome change to players used to the same old grind from previous years. Check out the gallery below for the complete list of items available on the vendors, and stay tuned for more Love is in the Air info as it comes in! %Gallery-84863%
Loot is in the air
Love is already in the air on the European realms and MMO Champion has the details on the loot which drops from the three new Love is in the Air bosses. Three apothecaries have taken up shop in Shadowfang Keep: Baxter, Hummel and Frye. They'll be there for the duration of the holiday as daily quest bosses and following is a list of what they drop (mouseover for their stats): Winking Eye of Love Heartbreak Charm Shard of Pirouetting Happiness Sweet Perfume Broach Choker of the Pure Heart Forever-Lovely Rose Vile Fumigator's Mask Toxic Wasteling The Heartbreaker But the drop from Apothecary Hummel that I am most excited about is the Big Love Rocket Mount. It's pink, it has zhevra seats and a naughty, naughty name. Naughty. Stay tuned for more Love is in the Air info as it comes in.
One Shots: The glow of Love
When it comes to looking for new gaming ideas, there's no denying Eskil Steenberg's procedurally-generated art-house MMO, Love stands out. Now in beta, Eskil has been working hard at improving the game since the last time we looked at it. Today, we have a gorgeous One Shots from the beta to share with you. This came in with a report in from the front lines, courtesy of GamingLove's iamacyborg, who writes: This is a screenshot of a player settlement in Eskil Steenberg's game, Love, on the UK1 server. We had the base set up on top of a few pillars, over a lake, with a force-field (that pink ball) protecting the important tokens. Here's a video someone took of the settlement a little while after the screenshot was taken, once we'd set up a perimeter defence with some blaster turrets. Are you playing something we haven't seen before - or only see rarely? If so, why not take a moment and send some screenshots in? Just mail them to us at oneshots AT massively DOT com along with your name, the name of the game, and a quick description. We'll post it out here and give you the credit. %Gallery-9798%
All the World's a Stage: What's love got to do with it
Character roleplay tends to be rooted in fundamental human emotions. Rage, fear, friendship, curiousity, and hope are all well within the spectrum of your character's feelings. And without getting into a bunch of sophomore psychology, I'd argue that all these emotions are fairly key to hitting the difference between a believable character. Without acknowledging and displaying these emotions, your character is simply a cardboard cutout -- a silhouette moving through the game without any real motivation or gravitas. I might be overstating that argument a tad, but a believable character can be a complex little critter. And the most complex emotion of all can be . . . love. (I had to take a moment here not to bust out in "What's love got to do with it?") Love stories are hard. I think they're actually the hardest story to roleplay successfully. It's incredibly easy to take your roleplay in the direction of a sticky-sweet romance. And then, for everyone of those stories I've seen, I've equally seen a cold, hard, son-of-Illidan whose heart was torn asunder, and he wil no longer be capable of love. So, if these are the two ends of the love spectrum, how do you successfully hit the middle? What's the believable range? What's the viable, interesting roleplay stories, when the whole idea of a love story is so fraught with pits and traps?
PSA: The Love Beta is out (or 'We feel like playing Love -- and now we can!')
Our illicit affair with pseudo-MMO Love has officially begun, with today marking the the opening of the game's public, but paid, beta. The paid aspect of the beta is minimal, we should note -- a €3/30 days price hardly seems like a lot. As the game's sole developer Eskil Steenberg explained to us in an email after last week's news announcing the public beta, "The Beta is open to everyone, but unfortunately I need funds to run the server farm, so it will cost 3 Euros to get 30 days of access." Moreover, Steenberg stands to make no profits from the beta entry fee, telling us he simply needs "to afford the bandwidth and hardware to keep it running." We're pretty okay with it, if only for the fact that we get to tell people that we're paying such a low price for Love.
LOVE open beta is now live
It's been almost two years since we at Massively first laid eyes on Eskil Steenberg's MMO Love, and wondered if it would ever make it to production. The unique look and gameplay features of Love made it stand out immediately, and we (along with a good number of fans) remained anxious to see the game succeed as we watched production advance and open alpha approach. Now one-man design studio Steenberg has crossed another hurdle. He's finished up a list of 26 things he wanted to add to the game, and beta launched today. The client is available for download at the site, and three euros will net you one month of gameplay. (Steenberg suggests that you download first and make sure the client will run on your computer before you pay for anything.) If you're interested in checking out an MMO that's unlike pretty much anything currently out there, visit the Love page, read through what Steenberg has to say, and give the beta a try.
Love kicking off beta testing January 7
If the world of popular music has taught us anything, it is that "love" is totally and completely broken. It's chock-full of exploits, it's got irrevocable balancing issues, and according to Bad English, it's simply too expensive. Fortunately, the game called Love will hopefully prevent these issues from cropping up when it enters its beta testing phase on January 7. Until that time, only registrants in the pay-to-play Alpha test can log on. We've contacted the game's creator to find out if the beta will require some sort of registration and selection, or whether if it will be completely open to the public. If it's the latter, we suggest checking it out -- it's a lovely, bizarre little game. [Via Massively]
Love's beta launches on January 7th
Eskil has done it! He has completed the "List of 26" and has shut off the "join Love" screen until January 7th, when the beta will officially open up to all new players. However, if you've been with Eskil through the Alpha process, you have a small thank you gift in the form of the servers already open for you and patched up with the beta client. So, if you have had an active account this past month, log in and see some of the things Eskil has changed and/or added to the game. Things like sound -- glorious sound! For the full run down of Eskil's 26 major additions to Love, you're going to have to check out his Twitter page. There's no formal patch notes as of yet, so this is the best you can do until Eskil gets it all down formally on paper or just lets us find out what he changed. [Via Blue's News]
Wife makes hubby a Halo screenshot quilt
Ironworks Gaming Crew user WillyQ has a great wife, as evidenced by the Halo quilt she made him for the holidays. The winter quilt features 20 of WillyQ's screenshots, along with game emblems and his name at the top (just in case someone tries to take it). This is a good time to mention that the divorce rate in America is between 40-50 percent. If spouses did more thoughtful stuff like this we could easily reduce it by ... 1-2 percent, maybe? [Via Hawtymcbloggy]
Love counts down to the launch of beta, account holders play free
While everyone's off enjoying the holidays, there's no rest for Eskil Steenberg. The one man of the one-man-MMO team is working hard though the holidays, putting together 26 major new features for the introduction of the Love beta test. While the features are secret, Eskil is updating his Twitter account with information on the new features as he completes them. Once all 26 items are done, Eskil will be updating Love and sending the game into beta. Currently the features look quite interesting -- such as new specialized settlements, sound pathing for the game, letting the game's AI use teleporter guns, a new building type (prisons), and something that is only referred to as "armageddon." Whatever the heck armageddeon is, it sounds awesome.
The Daily Grind: What's your favorite indie MMO?
There's never enough credit given to the indie MMO developers. These are the teams that usually put it all on the line with the hope of making a darn good MMO for people to play in. They don't have the budgets that the big teams do, and sometimes they don't have the graphics, but what they always have is the soul and innovation to put out their title.So today's Daily Grind is dedicated to the independent teams out there. And, in honor of them, we ask you what your favorite indie MMO is. You've got lots of choices, from Love to Face of Mankind to Neocron to Fallen Earth to Ryzom to Istaria to Darkfall to A Tale in the Desert to many others. We could keep going, but you'd probably get bored of us naming off all of these games.So tell us of your favorite indie MMO! For good measure, tell us some stories about your indie MMO of choice! Go go go!
Anti-Aliased: What is Love?
So what is love? That's certainly the metaphysical question of the ages, isn't it? Is it simply an attraction to another gender, or is it a deep bond between two people that goes beyond mere friendship, and more into the realm of headbanging, suit and sunglasses wearing pride? Do I have the authority to take on questions such as this in my editorial column?Heck no! That's why we're going to spend this week talking about Eskil Steenberg's indie-MMO, Love! We've been covering Love extensively this week, announcing that the alpha was available and showing off some really beautiful in-game footage. But, even with all of that, we never got into the meat of the game. What is Love about? What do you do in it? Why is it so special to us on the Massively staff?Those questions and more will be answered in this week's edition. So come on in, the Love is great!
A first look at the Love alpha
Ever since I first heard about Love at GDC, I've been hoping to get a chance to check it out. The graphical style floats somewhere between impressionist and Abstract, with only the suggestions of people and things. Gone are the "customize your character heavily" moments of an MMO. You simply log in and your character is immediately created - an amorphous entity ready to take part in all that Love has to offer. If you like to explore, Love has that. If you want to help build a mighty settlement, you can do that too. Alternately, if you want to run around blowing NPCs (and their settlements) off the map, that's also an option. While it is a paid alpha - something some may balk at, and others find quite reasonable considering Steenberg is developing Love solo - the game offers an interesting twist on MMOs as we know them. It's a little bit adventure game, a little bit cooperative civilization building, and a little bit FPS. How you get through the game - through fending for yourself or working with others - is entirely up to you. At 3 EUR per 30 days of paid time (approximately $4.50 US) it's worth checking out if you're curious. If, however, you're just interested in looking in on Love from afar, we have two videos full of our very own beautiful alpha Love exploration footage behind the break.
Indie MMO 'Love' goes into paid alpha testing
Try as we might to remain impartial about games that are a long way away from release, we fell in love with Love the second we laid eyes on it. Imagine our joy when we learned that Eskil Steenberg's city-building MMO had entered alpha testing, and could be played right this hot second. Having trouble imagining? Allow us to help -- our joy was immeasurable. A few of the game's followers have raised quite a stink about one caveat to the alpha test: Applicants are required to purchase a license in order to join in the festivities. At €3.00 (or about $4.50), it's hardly a bank-breaking purchase, but mandating payment in order to test out an MMO is fairly uncharted territory. Don't look to us for criticism of this unprecedented practice -- we instantly bought it.
Love opens up logins for alpha testers
A while back, we mentioned that the Love alpha client was available for download, so you can run the engine on your system and help the one-man-developer, Eskil Steenberg, with gathering data for his server. Eskil has gotten done that portion, however, and has now opened the anticipated game for alpha testing audiences.Eskil has stressed on his website that much of what Love is now may not be what the game is in a few months or years, and that alpha will be chock full 'o bugs. Things may have been going really well for him, but he is giving no one any assurances on how well the alpha will function.For those interested in Eskil's project, the open alpha will cost you 3 Euros (about $4.50) so Eskil can pay for the servers and bandwidth. Eskil has also posted the full information on what the account creation page does, which can be found in the middle of his information on Love's alpha test.
Love reaches open alpha, client download now available
The above picture is not a lie -- it's the login screen to Eskil Steenburg's one man MMO, Love. Mr. Steenburg has just recently pushed the client into open alpha, letting users download and run the game on their PCs, but not log into the game. Not yet, at least.However, running the client is quite important, as it will send Eskil a few important statistics. The client will collect the name of your video card, if it supports the three OpenGL extensions he uses, and it will count how many people are interested so he can go invest in some servers without going overboard. So if you're interested in eventually playing the game, you can jump on over to his website, Quel Solaar, and grab yourself the open alpha of Love to "register your interest" by running the client on your machine. Plus, you get treated to an awesome look at Love's beautiful dynamic graphics.
Q? Entertainment connecting lovers with Q?'pid's Finger Puzzle
Is your relationship going through a rough patch, fueled by soul-crushing trust issues and mutual acrimony? Has your love begun to languish, leading you to wonder whether your significant other is really all that significant? Are you looking for stopgap measures to keep the fires of love burning? Don't shell out cash for counseling -- there's an app for that. Rather, there will be soon -- Lumines developer Q? Entertainment recently revealed a bizarre iPhone project titled Q?'pid's Finger Puzzle, which tasks a couple with tracing lines to clear up fuzzy "titillating images." Following a level, the couple is given a compatibility report which offers relationship advice such as "look into your partner's heart and drink in their vapors." Yeesh. Thanks for the helpful tip, Buffalo Bill.
Craigslist Lotharios looking for PlayStation Home rendezvous
There, shining like a beacon of justice atop Mt. Craigslist, we saw it. Two men from the Washington D.C. area had poured their hearts out on a digital classified ad, looking for women tailored specifically to their carnal needs. Their demands were innocent enough, until the inclusion of the immediate disqualification of "Obese Girls (try drinking water for a change)." This shallow (and confusing) item required immediate karmic retribution. As we pondered our involvement in this matter, we saw it: "Looking for potentially LTR (long-term relationship) with college educated women around our same age, to meet initially via Playstation Home." Our minds raced with the retaliatory possibilities -- shapeshifting would most certainly be involved, that much is given. But to what extent could this vulnerability be exploited? An hour of feminine manipulation, and then ... the switch? A day of personal exchanges before ... the exchange? A week? A month? A year? With solemn determination, we gathered our courage -- and became unspoken executors of the Longest Con. [Via Superannuation]
Breakfast Topic: I love
Matt Rossi and 248 of you (as of last night around ten) might hate things in the game, and that's cool. There's some things that I hate, too. But you know what? I'm a lover, not a fighter. Why hate when you can love, after all?There are a few things I love in the game. I love the satisfaction when an alt dings to 60, 70, or 80. There's always great new skills to be learned and new challenges to face. Nothing is more addicting to an MMO addict than reaching those benchmarks.I love the feeling at the end of the raid when you've downed an impossible boss, giving everything you and 24 other people had to make it happen. My buddy Jacob and I have often reminisced that we haven't had that feeling for a long time – not really since Kael'Thas, Illidan, or any of the Sunwell bosses -- but it was so damn good when it did happen that I'll take those memories with me into the next decade of game playing.Along those same lines, the arena battle where you end with just a few dozen points of health left and everyone else lies dead before your might – that's epic. I love that. The exhilaration, the sheer skill and determination to stay alive in a virtual world propels such legendary wins.So I have a challenge for you today, dearest WoW.com readers, let's love more than hate. I'm sure there's more than 248 things you all love about WoW -- show the world that all you need is love. And to sweeten the deal, I'll select 5 people whose responses I like the best and email them a TCG loot code, to be selected at random from a stack of codes that include Slashdance, Papa Hummel's Old-Fashioned Pet Biscuit, and a few others. Get your answers in before 11:59 p.m. EDT tonight (September 14th), which is when I'll select the winners and send them their codes.So tell me, what do you love?
