Retrospective
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Patch 4.3: Official preview of priest tier 13
The recently datamined priest tier 13 set has now been officially revealed by Blizzard, and it looks gorgeous. The Vestments of Dying Light are designed in a Venetian carnival style with creepy eyes, reminiscent of the mask that Ed Norton wore as the King of Jerusalem in Kingdom of Heaven. It's a very beautiful tier set. Blizzard states that priests are one of the harder classes to design badass armor sets for, but I think with this round, the design team definitely hit the mark. So far, tier 13 armor design has been less about the instance and the game itself and more about the free-form ideas that the class and armor designers want to play with. Artists are having a good time coming up with all sorts of crazy ideas without having to necessarily be set in any motif. I think it's a great exercise and is providing some of the coolest, potentially most iconic armor sets to date. Check out images from the priest tier gear retrospective in our gallery. %Gallery-135095%
The Mog Log: A year that wasn't
So it's been a year since the release of Final Fantasy XIV. Well, all right, that's a a bit debatable, what with the differing launch times for the collector's edition and the general retail edition, but for the purposes of this article and my own memory, I'm going to go ahead and focus on that one-year anniversary right now. I remember driving down to pick the game up a year ago on Thursday. That's close enough. And there's a lot that's changed since the game was released. It's a well-known fact that I liked the game even in its initial state, but it had some pretty major issues and some points of lacking implementation. And it doesn't feel like we're a year out from launch as a result of all the things that the game has changed since launch, with each patch bringing not just new content but major overhauls to the existing game. So was there even a point to launching the game right then, considering both the reception and the fact that we're still without a subscription charge?
How Steve Jobs changed Apple
With news of Steve Jobs's change of roles at Apple sweeping the web, it's worth looking back at how the company changed during his reign as CEO. Apart from taking Apple from its dismal depths to the most valuable company on Earth, under Jobs's leadership Apple also completely transformed several industries while outright inventing others. This is what Apple's main products looked like in 1997, before Steve Jobs retook charge of Apple for the first time since leaving in 1985: Did you own any of these? Chances are pretty good that you didn't. Very few people did. I didn't, although both Mike and Steve claim that they still have Newtons sitting on the shelf. Apple was on its deathbed back then, while Microsoft was unassailably ascendant. Apple was considered at best a niche company for niche users; at worst, it was considered a boondoggle. Michael Dell, CEO of the company that bears his name, famously quipped that Apple should be liquidated and the resulting money given back to the shareholders. A year later, in 1998, this happened: Steve Jobs killed the beige boxes and introduced the iMac, the genesis of Apple's new focus on style. The iMac stood out in the crowd in the late 90s, its unmistakable silhouette a stark contrast to the sea of anonymous beige/grey/black boxes of its competition. And in a move that would typify Apple's approach over the coming years, the iMac both introduced new technology and mercilessly pruned away the old -- it was the first mass market computer with USB and the first to ditch the floppy drive. Every Mac made since then can trace some part of its design back to this late-90s progenitor, the product that caught the world's attention and made us all think that maybe Apple was in it for the long haul after all. Then in 2001, this happened: Whether you thought it was revolutionary or "lame," over the course of the early- to mid-2000s the iPod went on to utterly dominate the portable music player scene. Ten years after its introduction, the iPod (and its descendants, in the form of the iPhone and iPod touch) has effectively killed both the CD player and the CD itself for a large portion of the music-listening crowd. More so even than the iMac, the iPod turned Apple's fortunes completely around and made the company a force to be reckoned with for the first time since the 80s. A well-known "halo effect" ensued, where users enamored of the iPod's interface, craftsmanship, and ease of use started buying up Macs in large numbers. It's no huge stretch to say that without the iPod, Apple as we know it might not exist today. Then, in 2007, this happened: Touchscreen smartphones are everywhere now, to the point that many of us take them for granted. But in 2007, the iPhone knocked the entire phone industry on its ear. Looking like something that came straight out of Captain Kirk's belt, the iPhone proved to be every bit as revolutionary as Apple claimed. Naysayers everywhere predicted the iPhone would be Apple's doom, because the company was now dipping its toe into an established market with industry giants who were all too eager to slap this upstart tech company into the dirt. The pundits were all wrong; the iPhone has single-handedly transformed the smartphone market from the RIM-dominated days of monochrome, button-laden BlackBerrys into the new world of glass-paneled touchscreens that adapt to our needs rather than requiring us to adapt to theirs. The App Store showed the iPhone's true potential; far more than a phone + iPod + internet navigator, thanks to hundreds of thousands of third-party apps the iPhone could become almost anything to almost anyone. Then, in 2010, this happened: In the 1980s, Apple called the Macintosh "the computer for the rest of us." Sadly, it never really lived up to its potential as the computer for the masses -- that mantle fell upon Windows, for better or worse. Less technically-inclined users have always wanted a computer that simply gets out of their way and lets them use it, and that desire is likely a major factor in the iPad's tremendous success thus far. Geeks will obsess over what the iPad doesn't have -- ports, menus, windows, a built-in keyboard, an accessible file system, and so forth -- and just like the iPhone, scores of analysts the world over predicted the iPad would fizzle in the marketplace and prove to be Apple's first big misstep in ten years. Instead, the iPad has done to the tablet market what the iPod did to the portable music player market: upended it, redefined it, dominated it. People may question whether anyone needs the iPad, particularly if they've never used one before. I know -- I was one of them. But perhaps more than any of the products discussed here, the iPad points the way to the future of computing. Instead of intransigent boxes that get in the way of what we want to do half the time (yes, even Macs), the future of computing is computers as an appliance, far more adaptable to our needs than the traditional PC ever was or ever could be. This is what Apple's main products look like today: This is what fourteen years of progress looks like. I can only imagine how things will be in 2025. Over the course of the coming weeks, we will undoubtedly hear from many sources that Steve Jobs's move from CEO to chairman means the doom of Apple. We've already been hearing that for years. Looking back on how Jobs changed Apple, it's not hard to see why so many pundits might think Apple's success is dependent on having Jobs at the helm -- but Apple's success hasn't been due to a single man. No man builds an empire alone, and the best-built empires live on profitably long after their founding fathers have handed over the reigns to someone else. Apple is a company composed of thousands of talented and visionary individuals. The iMac, iPod, iPhone, and iPad didn't spring fully-formed from Steve Jobs's forehead. Neither did the MacBook Pro, the MacBook Air, OS X, iLife, iTunes, or the App Store. To view Apple as Santa's workshop and Steve Jobs as Mr. Claus is to miss the point entirely. No one can predict with certainty what the future holds for Apple now that Steve Jobs has stepped down as CEO. Many will try, no doubt. But history shows the folly of counting Apple out before the match is truly finished -- if you'd told 1997's tech pundits that Apple would be where it is 14 years later, they'd have laughed you out of the room. All of us at TUAW want to thank Steve Jobs for turning Apple into a company worth writing about, worth getting excited about, and worth making a daily part of our lives. I'm not known for being an optimist most of the time, but I still don't see any of those things changing anytime soon.
The Mog Log: Winging right along
Out of every expansion that Final Fantasy XI has sported, Wings of the Goddess feels the most incidental to me in some ways. Not that it was bad or unimportant or anything of the sort, just that it wasn't quite like the other expansions in the game's history. Part of that is because of the fact that it was released at a time when I was taking an extended break from Final Fantasy XI, but part of that is because it's probably the least ambitious of all the game's expansions. Rise of the Zilaart was unambitious, but for most gamers in North America, it wasn't really a distinct expansion so much as another part of the core game. Chains of Promathia and Treasures of Aht Urhgan were both ambitious, with the former probably being the least successful of the lot and the latter probably standing out as the "best" expansion. That leaves WotG in the unenviable position of being the mediocre expansion, just good enough to beat out the nadir but not nearly good enough to reach the game's apex.
Storyboard: The year of bionic chickens in review
Saying "year one" sounds so pretentious. Besides, it wasn't year one for roleplaying -- just year one for the column, with this installment serving as the capstone. And as I'm wont to do on anniversaries, I'd like to take the opportunity to look back at what worked, what didn't, and what I could be doing to make the column a bit better. Also: the header images. (I'd be remiss if I didn't mention the impromptu guessing game that's grown up around the headers' three images. I will also admit that's motivating today's image.) When I first started the column, I had a loose list of things I wanted to address over time, some of which wound up coming out early on and some of which fell off the radar altogether. Despite that, I knew that Storyboard was going to be a tricky column to write, because it covers an immensely wide field of topics. We certainly have other roleplayers on staff writing columns about roleplaying in a given game, but I wanted to make this something bigger, to talk about roleplaying in a broad sense as well as specific. That meant -- and still means -- dancing around a lot of issues, working with a lot of different play styles, and trying to keep things entertaining for the entire audience.
City of Heroes posts the second part of its developer retrospective
If you've been playing City of Heroes since its salad days, you're probably familiar with all of the many changes the game has seen since launch. But while player retrospectives are all well and good, it's rare that you get to find out developer memories of the game from launch to the present. The development team at Paragon Studios has previously released the first part of a retrospective on the game's early days, and the newest installment has just gone live today. This retrospective focuses on the team's favorite City of Heroes videos as well as the experience of the game on launch and the most memorable moments from fan conventions. Whether you're a longtime player or you just picked the game up recently, it's a great chance to look back at the earliest days from release. And if you're still in a celebratory mood after the retrospective, it's probably worth noting that the game is hosting its reactivation week starting now.
City of Heroes developers look back and show off the team
While we've been taking our own stroll down memory lane with City of Heroes, there are people who haven't just been playing the game for seven years but actively working on it the whole time. With the anniversary still fresh in everyone's mind, the developers have begun posting a series of retrospectives on the game's past, with the first installment asking a number of staff members which of the game's several updates was the all-time best. If that's not quite what you're looking for, today has also seen the latest issue of the Intrepid Informer, introducing players to VFX artist Keetsie Braz da Cunha. While the VFX team might not always be one of the most visible elements of the game, the little sparkles and shines are what gives City of Heroes its spark (pun intended). So take a look behind the scenes to see what it's like making superheroes look appropriately super along with fountains looking appropriately foamy.
A Mild-Mannered Reporter: Seven years in the city, part two
Welcome back to the second part of our look back through the past year of City of Heroes. The last installment, in case you missed it, discussed the first two issues that went live over the past year, Issue 17 and Issue 18. And here's a quick recap: They were pretty awesome, but they were lacking much for the high-end portion of the game. This time we're turning our gaze forward to the later two issues, the good and the bad. And there was some bad that came with these updates, a certain level of unavoidable badness. I called this part of the game's history the fall of the unleveled empire, and while I don't think we've quite obtained empire status, there are those among us -- including me -- who either believed that leveling past a certain point would always be an option or believed at least that level-locking was something that happened to other games. Enough meandering about it -- let's finish up our look at City of Heroes in its seventh year of operation.
A Mild-Mannered Reporter: The right now in review
About a year ago, we saw the six-year anniversary of City of Heroes, and along with the overly long and yet still not comprehensive retrospective, I wrote a column about what the game needed for the future. It was a reasonable column at the time, what with a year stretching out ahead of us, another potential competitor on the horizon, and the game's latest and greatest expansion still not available for play. But time makes liars of us all, and there are a lot of things that have happened over the past year. So before we look back on the game over the past year, let's take a look at what we needed then, what's happened since, and where I was enormously wrong. (I'm nothing if not honest.) And let's also look around at games other than City of Heroes, because let's face it, if you're in the genre of superheroic MMOs, you can't ignore the other two competitors in the fairly narrow field. When I first talked about the future, we were awaiting DC Universe Online's launch, and we weren't expecting any big business-model moves out of Champions Online.
Letter to the Black Prophecy community outlines the state of the game
It's been about a month since European players were able to head out to the black... Black Prophecy, that is. American players have been able to sign up for the closed beta, but it's not quite the same as the experience on the live servers. But whether you're in the beta or playing live, the new letter to the community from Patrick Streppel has plenty of interesting information about the current state of the game. As Streppel puts it, while the game is still undergoing major polishing patches, both gamigo and Reakktor Media are confident with the game as a released free-to-play game. The game's first major patch is slated for June and will feature a variety of new endgame elements as well as a new weapon type. Further down the line, the development team wants to enhance the PvP experience to keep the two factions of the game's lore at odds and in conflict. Black Prophecy players and testers alike should read the letter, as it's an interesting look behind the scenes after the first month of launch.
Internet Explorer versions 1 through 9 compared, signs of progress found (video)
Most sane folks will have greeted the arrival of Internet Explorer 9 with a curious click on a download button or a simple update of the browser they were already using, but that's not enough for everyone. One chap with a taste for the eccentrically geeky decided to take this opportunity to go through a retrospective of every version of IE, going all the way back to Windows 95's first iteration, and to run the Acid compatibility tests to see how they stand up to modern standards. IE1, the ancient, CSS-deprived beast that it is, choked immediately and failed to even display its homepage without an error, but things improved steadily from there until the triumph of iteration 9. See all that glorious progress happening in the space of just a few minutes in the video after the break.
Darkfall's development history detailed in lengthy blog post
Sandbox MMOs attract a certain type of player. They also attract a certain type of developer, and one such former Darkfall programmer has penned a lengthy retrospective piece examining the history of the fantasy title from 1997 to the present. Yes, we said 1997, as that's when Darkfall was originally conceived. Ricki Sickenger writes about everything from the bursting of the dot com bubble (which affected Darkfall's investor relations during the Razorwax days) to a 1999 issue of Game Developer Magazine -- and a John Carmack quote -- that inspired Darkfall's devs and prompted them to use Java for the game's logic. Sickenger's blog post is technically oriented, and non-programmers may experience a bit of glassy-eyed indifference when he goes into the details of the team's unique approach to Java and C++, but it's nonetheless a fascinating report from the front lines of one of the more successful indie MMORPGs in recent memory.
Blizzard 20-year anniversary retrospective video now online
Blizzard turned 20 years old this year, and we have been given a wonderful treat by Blizzard's founders -- the story straight from their mouths. Are you interested in Blizzard history? I sure am. Mike Morhaime and Allen Adham lead us through a 20-year retrospective about the foundation and formation of the company, their trials and tribulations, and how we got to the Blizzard of today from two guys in the same computer architecture class. The video is absolutely fascinating. Check it out at the Blizzard Entertainment 20-year anniversary site.
Istaria's development team looks back and forges ahead
For a lot of gamers, Istaria's main point of fame is the fact that it's the game in which you can play as a dragon, which is a bit reductive of the game as a whole, a game that underwent significant changes and improvements over the past year. A retrospective was recently put together by the development team to highlight the upgrades that the game has seen, including a revamped mid-game content band and a general re-evaluation of some of the less clear-cut quest objectives. But there's always room to improve, something the team is acutely aware of. In a companion piece, the core principles of the game are outlined along with design goals for the next year, including greater integration between the bipedal and draconic potions of the game, more connection between adventurers and crafters, and a broad enhancement to keeping the first few moments in the game as memorable as possible. Istaria fans should be happy to see the design goals stated so openly, and it's to the team's credit that it's aiming high for this year's patches. [Thanks to Joe for the tip!]
Terrible twos? A look at Darkfall on its second anniversary
It's hard to believe that two years have passed in the lands of Agon, but passed they have, and Darkfall is celebrating its second anniversary this week. Aventurine's FFA PvP sandbox title has turned out to be one of the more resilient MMORPGs in recent memory, surviving a disastrous launch and a lingering (and undeserved) reputation as a haven for parolees, sociopaths, and griefers. It's also managed to grow its dev team, release three expansions, and carve out a respectable niche for itself in an increasingly competitive massive industry. What's the secret to the game's success? Can Aventurine become the next CCP and ride the coattails of a non-linear MMORPG to indie greatness? Is Darkfall, purportedly the hardest of the hardcore PvP games, really a fantastic PvE sandbox in disguise? Join us after the cut for some thoughts on these topics as well as a peek at the highlights from Darkfall's first two years.
Global Agenda: Year one retrospective and interview
What a difference a year makes, eh? Round about February of 2010, Hi-Rez Studios was an unknown indie developer gearing up to unleash a newfangled "spy-fi" shooter on an unsuspecting populace. Fast forward 12 months and Global Agenda has morphed from a relatively standard Team Fortress-style kill-'em-all to an actual MMO. Killing is still the order of the day, as few MMOs are so completely focused on fast-paced bloodletting, but Global Agenda has added an impressive amount of bulk over the past year, with more on the way. Hi-Rez also managed to successfully change the game's business model in 2010 and ultimately ended up molding Global Agenda into one of our favorite MMOs. Suit up, grab your crescent jetpacks, and fly past the cut for a few reasons why as well as a look at the game's evolution to date. There's even an interview with Hi-Rez's Todd Harris on page two!
The Mog Log: A year of two games
It's really hard to believe that I've been writing this column for an entire year, especially when the start of it seems so fresh in my mind. Back in January of 2010, the first installment went live on a Sunday, sort of a television-style early premier event before moving to a regular timeslot on Saturday. Though it was mostly a collection of links to useful sites for fans of Final Fantasy XI and Final Fantasy XIV, it was still the start of something that's clearly stood the test of time, at least a year's worth. To be totally accurate, I should say that the first anniversary of the column fell on Monday. But I decided to go a little bit later than an exact year, so this week is when we're looking back over the past year of columns. And it's been an interesting time to be doing such a column, since we've had a rollercoaster ride with Final Fantasy XIV's launch and subsequent issues, not to mention the groundswell of content for Final Fantasy XI. So I'm going to take a look back to see what worked, what didn't, and what would best be never spoken of again.
Exploring Eberron: The calm before the storm
Dungeons and Dragons Online will be celebrating its fifth birthday in exactly one month. There's no doubt that the game has come a very long way in the past five years, bringing wonderful or horrible changes, depending on whom you ask. Turbine is hinting at big things coming during the month of February as part of the events commemorating the fifth anniversary, but since all is quiet for now, I thought it might be a good time to look at how Turbine has done things up to this point and at what's planned for Exploring Eberron in February. Before we continue, I want to mention a great sale in the DDO store. The store is always marking down some item or another, but this one is broader than the standard "20% off this or that" sale. (Not that those aren't great -- we all love to save our Turbine Points!) This weekend's sale knocks half the point cost off all XP, SP, and HP potions, so it's a great time to stock up. Follow along after the jump and let's start gearing up for February!
A Mild-Mannered Reporter: Auld lang syne
A year ago on January 27th, viewers of the site were treated to a header image in which Mr. Swift poked hopelessly at a keyboard. This was the header for the first installment (or "issue" if you want to be thematic) of A Mild-Mannered Reporter, covering all things City of Heroes. And for those of you who are just now glancing at your calendar, yes, that was just about a year ago. Those of you who remembered my sign-off for the last column (the one that mentioned this would be an anniversary column) are in slightly better shape. These things happen once a year, and I figured one day early is better than six days late. And it's been quite a year for the game and the column alike, with plenty to talk about every Wednesday. So let's take a trip down memory lane and look back at a year of the column with another year just around the corner. If you're just coming into the column now, or if you want to look back at some old favorites, now's the time.
IBM looks back on 100 years of history, finds plenty to be proud of (video)
Want to know who the self-confessed "mother of the motherboard" is? Or why every piece of organically farmed, tenderly loved food at your local Trader Joe's has a barcode on it? Or perhaps you're curious to learn more about how millions of airline reservations can be made around the world with unfailing reliability? All those queries have their answers in IBM's self-congratulating videos after the break. Commissioned as a celebration of the company's upcoming 100th birthday, they chronicle some of its more notable moments in the global spotlight. Our favorite little nugget of discovery was finding out that testing for the IBM Personal Computer included the question, "would it run Pac-Man?" -- conclusively proving that the foremost reason for the PC's existence is, and has always been, gaming.
