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The Daily Grind: Do you like in-game gambling?
Putting aside the thorny issue of lockboxes, let's turn our attention today on the subject of in-game gambling. I've noticed that more and more games are including some form of gambling, usually as minigames. From Fallen Earth's electronic blackjack to Star Trek Online's Dabo wheel, there seems to be no shortage of ways for players to waste double their currency. In-game gambling actually has a long association with computer and video game RPGs. I've never seen it as a legitimate money-maker so much as a pleasant distraction from combat and a tool for immersion. Plus, if the developers actually managed to create a good poker minigame out of it all, then it's like getting two games for the price of one! It might be hard to developers these days to keep microtransactions out of in-game gambling systems, but fortunately that's not a universal problem as of yet. Whether or not real money comes into the equation, do you enjoy gambling in your MMOs? Every morning, the Massively bloggers probe the minds of their readers with deep, thought-provoking questions about that most serious of topics: massively online gaming. We crave your opinions, so grab your caffeinated beverage of choice and chime in on today's Daily Grind!
Zynga Slots launches for iOS
You know how heroin addicts can go to methadone clinics to stave off cravings? Well, Zynga's new iOS app is kinda like that, but for Reno grannies that blow their Social Security benefits on the one armed bandit.Zynga Slots is now available for free on the App Store, touting various improvements over real-world slots, such as the fact that losing your life's savings is dramatically less probable. Players can invite their friends in true Zynga fashion, which increases the Jackpot payout of their own machines. The more you play, the higher you level, which in turn unlocks Zynga-themed machines with higher betting limits and rewards.
Champions Online unlocks a new archetype and a sale
With the conversion to free-to-play, it's easier than ever to get into Champions Online, but you're still a bit limited in your play choices. The latest archetype rollout is designed to help address that issue, giving players access to the Tempest. A ranged character build with a focus on electrical abilities, the new archetype is free to Gold players and available for purchase in the C-Store for Silver players. There's also a new video available to show off the stormy hero build before you buy it. Of course, you may not have the spare slots needed for a new archetype to even matter. That's thankfully mitigated by a sale on character slots at 20% off until March 30th. Champions Online players, subscribing or not, should be happy to learn that it's easier to get yourself a few new slots to play around with, whether reserved for the new archetype or other experimentation.
Officers' Quarters: How to fill slots
Every Monday Scott Andrews contributes Officers' Quarters, a column about the ins and outs of guild leadership. This week's e-mail is straight and to the point: Dear Mr. Andrews: In your latest Officer's Quarters article you mention filling raid slots by seniority is not a good system. What is a good system for filling raid slots? What would you recommend? Michael Great question, Michael! When you have too many raiders, it's supposed to be easy to put together a raid, right? It's often harder than it seems, and you can really stir up drama by making ill-considered choices. Let's examine the various systems for filling raid slots.
Officers' Quarters: The fourth tank's lament
Every Monday Scott Andrews contributes Officers' Quarters, a column about the ins and outs of guild leadership. It's no secret that tanks are generally in short supply. Blizzard has admitted as much and even designed the Death Knight class specifically to entice more people to taking up the tanking role. They've gone away from fights like the notorious, original implementation of the Four Horsemen encounter that required 8 fully geared tanks and given us more fights like Rotface that only require 2. But for a 25-player raid, you generally need 3. So what about those fourth tanks? They find themselves riding the pine: Dear Scott, I have been playing WoW for just under four months and have worked my butt off to make my Warrior the best tank that I possibly can. I get numerous compliments about my ability and pride myself on being liked by all. I have joined one of the top raiding guilds on my server, but I am finding problems getting selected for raids. Currently we raid 3 nights a week, and on average, we have 35-40 people showing up EVERY raid night. Obviously, you cannot take 40 people into ICC25 and therein lies the problem. The current state of raids encourages guilds to take 3 tanks at most, and at times, the third tank is running in an offspec, most likely dps. I am one of five tanks in the guild, and the newest of the bunch. All gear is about equal. The other four get selected for raids on a nightly basis based on seniority. I have remained diligent and have shown up for raids every night without fail, only to be told there is no need for me tonight.
Officers' Quarters: The fall surge
Every Monday Scott Andrews contributes Officers' Quarters, a column about the ins and outs of guild leadership.Back in June, I wrote about surviving the summer, when raider interest wanes and many players go AFK for weeks on end. Now that fall is back in full swing, all those players are back. Many guilds find themselves with a renewed roster of raiders clamoring for suddenly limited slots. This week, one reader asks how to handle all the extra bodies. Scott, I lead a casual raiding guild. We have 1 25-man a week and about 3 10-mans a week including ToC 10 and Ulduar 10. I don't force anyone to raid. I tell them that they can sign up for whatever they want but if they sign up and don't show up, then they are penalized. My problem is that since I allow anyone to sign up and I don't have set groups, what do I do when I have more people signed up than I need?
Officers' Quarters: The standby experience
Every Monday Scott Andrews contributes Officers' Quarters, a column about the ins and outs of guild leadership."You're on standby tonight." No one wants to hear these words when a raid is forming. It's aggravating, frustrating, and downright depressing sometimes. This week's e-mail comes from a player who's had it with being on standby. I will talk about what she can do to help herself, why raid leaders do this to you, and how the standby system can work better for everyone involved. Hey Scott! I've been reading your column for a few months now and I particularly enjoy it. However, I thought I'd never find myself writing to it. I'm in a bit of a conundrum. You see, my guild of which I was a member of for quite a few months and enjoyed hanging out with and raiding with broke up. Those of us who were still around joined a good raiding guild on the server. I've seen the leaders and the officers in action and I'm impressed. The guild is fairly large and compared to my last guild, foreign. My previous guild was very friendly and explained things to me. I'm fairly new to this game and especially raiding (I raided Karazhan only a few times as compared to some people's many, many, many times.), but I pick up on things quickly and try to be as useful and helpful as I can. At the moment, there are more than 25 people signed up to raid and the leaders pick who gets to go and who sits on standby. They also use a DKP system, which I am fine with. My problem is with the standby system.
Officers' Quarters: Disposable raiders
Every Monday Scott Andrews contributes Officers' Quarters, a column about the ins and outs of guild leadership.PUG players seem to be everywhere these days. For guilds that can't field a full 25, PUGs are running Naxxramas and Obsidian Sanctum and even the Eye of Eternity alongside you. They're practically half the raid in your Vault of Archavon runs. They help your 10-player raid take out Heroic Flame Leviathan for some quick, juicy iLevel 226 loot. If Blizzard keeps nerfing Ulduar, pretty soon they'll be looting Keepers' chests, too. Last week's e-mail was practically a blog unto itself, so this week I thought I'd pick a short one. One reader asks what we owe these PUG players. Can we just boot them as soon as some of our own guild members log on? Hi Scott I have a question about what is considered fair to pugs in a raid. I don't do pug raids myself so I am out of touch with what the etiquette is.We had needed to pug for a raid and were just about to start, when a couple of guildies logged on. They wanted us to kick some pugs so they could join the raid. The issue isn't that they logged on after raid start, but purely about whether it is considered fair to kick a pug out in favour of a guild member.
There's plenty to do in Dragon Quest V
Dragon Quest V is going to be one of the most feature-packed games on the DS. Don't try and argue with us, for Famitsu's recent look at the title only cemented that fact in our mind. There is a lot going on here. Famitsu's article highlights not only a DS-exclusive character, Deborah, but also documents some of the other timesinks available in the game, should you wish to take a break from the main story. You can enjoy some Poker or Slots over at the casino, or partake in one of the other many mini-games available. You can even enjoy some combat in the Fight Field. If you want to check out some new screens, head on over to Famitsu. %Gallery-12146%
Grab your free CoX slots while you can
Enigmatic City of Heroes redname Ghost Falcon has drawn players' attention to an important point: the offer of two free character slots just for logging in won't last forever. When Issue 12: Midnight Hour went live, bringing with it the long-awaited code for additional purchaseable character slots, all players who logged in were able to claim two slots for free. Long-term players got even more, but everyone was granted at least two - which is conveniently just enough to start one Soldier of Arachnos VEAT and one Arachnos Widow.The patch notes at the time explained that this wouldn't be a permanent offer, but some players may have overlooked this. As Ghost Falcon explains, 'Please note that the free two slots are only being given to "active" accounts that log into the game during this gift window. If your account is active, but you've never logged in, you're not getting your two free slots when the window closes.' The good news is that NCsoft hasn't yet specified a closing date for the window. Nonetheless, if you're thinking about coming back to CoX, or just pondering logging in for long enough to claim the freebies, now is a good time to do it.
Have Clone, Will Travel: An EVE Online Wish List
With Empyrean Age and and Ambulation just around the corner, CCP is about to make a lot of its EVE Online subscribers very happy, including yours truly. The idea of walking around in a space station has been a wish of mine for quite some time, ever since I got word that CCP was looking at doing something like it. Of course my EVE Online wish list is much longer and probably won't get fulfilled for some time. Indeed it would keep the Icelandic developer busy for a number of years! Instead, let's narrow the list to the 5 top items and see what we've got.
CoX: Throw Moar Slots!
CoX players have been crying out for extra character slots for some time. Now, with Issue 12 bringing both Powerset Proliferation and the new Villain Epic ATs, many of us had feared we'd have to delete some characters to make room for all the new ones we're aching to make. Positron has come to our rescue by confirming plans to add additional character slots with Issue 12. Here's how the optional additional character slots will work.
Tomb Raider comes to online video slot machines. Finally!
If there's one thing we here at Joystiq constantly find ourselves thinking while playing Tomb Raider games, it's "Man, if only this experience could be translated into an online video slot machine." Well someone at Belle Rock Entertainment must have had a window into our souls, because the group has just unveiled Tomb Raider: The Secret of the Sword, a new video slot for their online casinos.The machine isn't based directly on the games, unfortunately. Instead, it promises to "faithfully capture the gripping excitement and suspense of the original movie" with "a glossy 5 reel 30 pay-line multi-faceted package." Fans of the movie will be happy to know that the "randomly triggered Super Mode" and "Global Adventure Bonus" have been faithfully captured here. The Secret of the Sword joins a similar Hitman slot machine in the annals of lame cross-marketing ideas for Eidos products impressive and engaging Eidos slot machine ports.
Guild bank prices lower, still ain't cheap
As Amanda reported on Sunday, there's good news for people planning to start up guild banks (especially those of you planning to roll your own for the extra space)-- they're going to be cheaper. The prices have been lowered on the PTR, and here are the new prices for each guild bank slot you buy.Tab 1: 100 GoldTab 2: 250 GoldTab 3: 500 GoldTab 4: 1000 GoldTab 5: 2500 GoldTab 6: 5000 GoldSo yes, you counted right, 9350 gold for the entire set of 588 bank slots-- six times 98 slots per tab. That's a lot of storage, and all it'll cost your guild is... almost two epic riding skills. Maybe you better start taxing your guild right now. Still cheaper than it was before (the last two tabs have been cut in half-- used to be 5000g and 10,000g), but it's still a nice chunk of change. Start saving now.[ via incgamers ]
Learning a third profession at level 80
Nerrisa brings up an interesting idea on the forums that I hadn't considered before-- what if we all got to choose a third profession when we reach level 80? For some, handling two professions is more than enough, but there are also plenty of people who could definitely benefit from a third. And although the professions are paired off pretty well (Alchemy and Herbalism, Leatherworking and Skinning), there are definitely some trios that would work well also-- Enchanting goes great with anything, and Mining, Blacksmithing and Engineering would be a great combo, too, for power players who've reached 80 and are looking for lots more to do.Of course, Bornakk says no to the idea (actually, as Incgamers points out, he really says there are "no unannounced plans" for it to happen, which is quite a few qualifiers for him), so it's unlikely that we'll have an extra profession slot to face Arthas with. But don't forget that we will have a new profession, Inscription, and if Blizzard adds many more professions, maybe we will need a third slot to keep them all straight. I'd love for my characters to learn more, I'm just not sure if I'd have the diligence to get them all to 375-- I'm having enough trouble with two as it is.
Not for carpal tunnel sufferers: Shooting Watch DS
Who knew that a simple concept like the Shooting Watch, a controller that measures how many times you can tap a button in 10 seconds, would go on to sell over a million units? This year marks the 20th anniversary of the yellow device's debut, and to celebrate, the Hudson Caravan has been touring Japan, selling limited edition merchandise and hosting button-tapping contests. Takahashi Meijin's 16 presses per second set the pace.Hudson manufactured a commemorative batch of 10,000 Shooting Watch systems earlier this year, but they were all sold almost immediately. Upset that he wasn't able to grab one, homebrew developer Retrohead created his own Shooting Watch game for the DS. Just like the real thing, it counts the number of times you can push the A button in ten seconds. If you're fast enough, the on-screen watermelon will explode!Shooting Watch DS has four other diversions -- clock, stop watch, three slots, and four slots -- all of which are significantly less fun than the titular mode. Keep your thumb rigid and tap past the post break for screenshots of the homebrew game. We've also embedded a video of Takahashi Meijin using his button-pressing skills to blow up watermelons!
PureDepth creation gives morphing abilities to slot machines
It looks like the glory days of walking into a casino, hacking a slot machine, and leaving a wealthy individual is over, as not only are "software glitches" leading to rewards being revoked, but now you'll have devious dutiful system administrators watching (and potentially controlling, you never know) everything that happens to your machine. PureDepth, Inc. has inked a deal with International Game Technology to provide a "realistic digital video display" to add a new level of control to vanilla slot machines. On the nifty side, programmers can change the typical cherries and numbers to baseball bats, for instance, if they know the Red Sox are taking a field trip to their casino, but on the disappointing end, you can now rest assured that folks behind the scenes now have complete control over "cost, payout, and nearly every other aspect of the game." Darn, looks like we're stuck with ATM-jacking from here on out, eh?
Konami slot machines pulled for subliminal messaging
While we've seen quite a few instances where shifty gamblers got the boot, this time it's the slot machines participating in a mass exodus of Canadian casinos. In another tale of misguided marketing garnering awful PR, Ontario's provincial gambling operator has "pulled 87 video slot machines out of service or physically removed them from its casinos" after an investigation found some tricky imagery hidden within. Apparently, a number of Konami slot machines flashed "winning jackpot symbols" for a fifth of a second every so often, purportedly giving players "subliminal messages" that would keep them chucking away coins for longer periods of time. Comically, Konami is asserting that the flashing images are simply a "software glitch" that will be fixed shortly, which leaves us wondering what else could be ailing these machines for the betterment of the establishment. Regardless, the Ontario-based discovery has spawned several other investigations in the US, British Columbia, and Quebec, but it has "yet to be determined" if the flashing imagery has effected the gameplay of addicts professional gamblers.[Via Konami]
Cheaper PS3 loses HDMI, slots, Wi-Fi, 40GB
As you can see above, there are a few things different between the two PS3 SKUs planned. (Hint: the obvious alterations concern high-def output and wireless connectivity -- though Bluetooth controllers should work just fine with both, with or without any chrome case highlighting.)So what's HDMI, built-in multimedia card-reader slots, wireless internet connectivity, and an extra 40 gigabytes' hard disk space worth to you? $100? Now that Sony's gone with the 2-SKU approach with its next-gen hardware (a la the Xbox 360's premium and "Core" systems), we can expect some tough consumer choices after six months -- with console shortages possibly for another six months after that -- as $100 separates the base $499 and premium $599 versions of Sony's "Clear Black" hope.HDMI is important to those who want to take full advantage of Blu-ray high def and have the new screens to use it; MemoryStick, SD, and CompactFlash slots would be nice for the PS3 memory-card users and those will run multimedia on the system; Wi-Fi's the only way to avoid stringing ethernet cables for online access; and 360 owners might appreciate the full 60GB available to potential buyers of the premium PS3 model. Neither model comes with a second HDMI port; thankfully, one should hopefully be all most users need. The details are laid out in a feature-comparison table at the end of Sony's official PS3 hardware press release, available in both Adobe Reader and Microsoft Word formats. Determine what's most important to your PS3 ambitions there.[Image pieced together from the PlayStation.com forums; thanks, Guru]
1UP discusses the Revolution
1Up is running a feature where they analyze the current hype, the machine, and how the launch will go for the Nintendo Revolution. The piece goes on to say:"Love it or hate it, the U.S. launch of the Nintendo DS was packed with games specifically pointed at the Western audience: Spider-Man 2, Madden '05, Asphalt Urban GT.& OK, maybe some of these should never have been released, but here's the point: Nintendo can, if pressed into action, mobilize third-party publishers to have launch games readied."That's the most important thing for the Revolution: third-party support. If the Revolution can maintain a steady stream of third-party releases then we'll see a much more drastic shift toward Nintendo when it comes to market dominance." At any rate, Nintendo president Satoru Iwata has told a Japanese newspaper that he sees the Thanksgiving holiday as being an important target to hit in the U.S. market, so we're probably assured that Revolution will be out by then. In stark contrast to Sony's usual method, the Japanese release may actually come slightly later, as with the Nintendo DS in 2004."Who do you guys think will get the revolution first: America or Japan?
