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Behind the Mask: Six editions of legacy can't be all bad
Before we get into today's discussion on the merits of Champions Online's lore, I want to do a quick brief on the pet pass and the Demonflame update for those not hounding the forums. Demonflame is a little under a week away on PTS and about two weeks on live; you can get the skinny from Poz here. The pet patch is currently on PTS, and it's not bad, but it still needs some work. If you're interested at all in bashing out pets I strongly advise getting on PTS, going to the boards and dropping some feedback. A few other things have been tweaked too. This week on Behind the Mask, we're going to talk about lore. I'm not talking about the game's lore, although I'll cover some of that too. I'm talking about the book lore! I finally gave in and picked up the PDFs (you can buy them from the Hero Games website), and I browsed through a lot of the lore content. I have to say I was pleasantly surprised. Most of the content in Champions Online consists of parodies of comic and MMO culture, and those elements dilute the serious and interesting lore content that is available. If you've read the lore entries that you can find throughout CO, you'll find that most of them actually sound kind of cool. Unfortunately, that lore is scattered and doesn't show a lot of the big picture. Fortunately, I blew a ton of cash on PDFs (including even the rulebooks) to get a good sense of the game's lore.
Waging WAR: Finding the sandbox
In this installment of Waging WAR, Greg takes a look at Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning from a few different angles and goes in search of the proverbial "sandbox" in a game that contains neither sand nor boxes. Somewhere along the line during my childhood, I developed a habit for playing games with nearly every game I've ever played. I can even remember a time in my early teens when I sat down with a few friends and collaborated on making our own version of battlechess. Pages of chicken-scratched rules and several dice results-tables later, and we were off and running for a solid week of the most entertaining chess matches I've ever played. Or there was that time with The Sims when I started creating experimental families and then leaving my computer on overnight and not interacting with them, just to see how successful they could be without my help. I could bore you for hours on end with examples of how I twisted the rules and made my own games from the games I've played. I suppose I can blame my penchant for metagaming on my early introduction to pen-and-paper roleplaying (i.e., D&D 1st Ed., to be specific). All I had was a sheet of paper, a handful of dice, a description of the world around me, and my imagination. By its very nature, PnP gaming is sandbox gaming. The reason I'm bringing this up now is that, until WAR, I had pretty much been able to "find the sandbox" in any MMO I was able to get my hands on. Whether it was building hardcore Dungeons & Dragons Online characters, roleplaying in City of Heroes, or achievement-chasing in World of Warcraft, I've never really been troubled with finding something to do when the grind started to wear me down. But now, with WAR, I'm finding most of my old tricks for MMO metagaming just aren't working. To read about what I've tried, and why it didn't work in WAR, follow along after the break.
Keepin' it real fake, part CXIX: PNP just can't hang with the PSP
Straight from the "spotted at the mall" files, one eagle-eyed tipster has shared a picture snapped at a local shopping venue where the presumably astounding PNP was being kept under lock and key. This marvel boasts the iconic PSP shape, obligatory D-pad, dedicated On / Off button (let's see your Sony do that... in this manner) and four puzzling buttons to the right of the "display" mounted in the middle. Yeah, it was only being sold for around $10, but you'd have to slip a Hamilton in our pocket before we'd mar our collection with this filth.[Thanks, Enrique]
Forum Post of the Day: What type of music do Azerothians make?
Acerba of Cenarion Circle started a pretty fun discussion the other day on her server boards: What type of music would typify various races and cultures of Azeroth? Sure, we all have our soundtracks for when we get tired of the in-game music, and the in-game music itself often has various themes that show again and again music to represent various concepts, but thinking about what music your character would listen to or what sounds you might here around a bonfire at Razor Hill (Well, besides L70ETC) or in a fine mansion in Silvermoon City is a really fun exercise. I'm one who often creates soundtracks for my PnP and MMORPG characters alike in order to understand this, so I find it a useful exercise for us roleplayers, as well.
Inconceivable: PS3 to get its own "exclusive" GTA IV episodes
Exclusive. The gaming industry keeps using that word. We do not think it means what they think it means. Or perhaps they do -- only the meaning changes from press release to press release, requiring a keen knowledge of context and PR deciphering techniques in order to obtain it. Eurogamer today reports that a source within Rockstar North (probably an exclusive source) indicates that, like the Xbox 360 version, the PS3's Grand Theft Auto IV will receive downloadable and undoubtedly "epic" episodes of an exclusive nature. Surely this renders Microsoft's previous claims to exclusivity invalid? Actually, no. At this year's X06 event, the Redmond giant touted "exclusive access to two downloadable, epic episodes of GTA IV via Xbox Live, each with hours of entirely new gameplay and available only on Xbox 360 just months after the release of the title." As we suggested before, barring the case of Rockstar releasing only two episodes in the game's lifetime, such wording does not rule out different episodes for the PS3.Exclusives and tired movie references aside, perhaps our concern should first switch over to the actual game (releasing in October 2007) before discussing the status of microtransacted add-on episodes. Is doubting GTA IV's quality ... inconceivable?[Thanks, Meh and Ethan.]
E3 booth tours: Sony
In an ongoing attempt to bring E3 as close as possible to you, the reader, here's a brief look into the Sony booth. Enjoy!
Free basic service on "PlayStation Network Platform"
Going by the working title "PlayStation Network Platform," Sony has announced that the basic level of its online service will be free (at least at first).While the company's "Live-killer" will readily support the PS3 at launch in November, it is not known to what extent the "PNP" (er, "PSNP"?) will support the PS2 and PSP.What are supported, however, are voice/video chat, messaging, matchmaking, ranking, game data uploading/downloading, shopping, content downloading, micro payments, subscriptions, and entitlement (i.e., user access) management. All of this will be tied together with a Live-like user login ID/handle name. Hello, 360... More P(S)NP pics follow.
