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Blood Pact: On the usefulness of SimulationCraft
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Blood Pact for affliction, demonology, and destruction warlocks. This week, Megan O'Neill will tell you how she became the princess warlock of a continent called Pandaria by switching to saur'lock spec. You know me: I play a warlock spec that starts with a 'D' only over several dozen copies of my cold, dead body. I'm diehard affliction whether the spec is on top or not. But that doesn't mean I don't ever pay attention to the DPS simulations. I just think the vocal playerbase hedges their bets a little too much on what comes out of the BiS heroic simulations. Fortunately for me, Ghostcrawler also feels players put too much emphasis on SimulationCraft when it comes to spec balance in PvE. Does this mean SimulationCraft is not valuable? No, it just means that players should be more aware of what's going into a particular simulation and how to interpret whatever data comes out.
Metaio brings more augmented reality promises to the iPhone
I can't get enough of this augmented reality stuff -- we've seen a lot of location-based text rendering already, but a German-based company named Metaio has released this video showing actual 3D images and models projected into the world through a phone (like the iPhone, one of the devices they say they're planning to support). Of course, this is still all just tests and demos -- not only is the company likely still trying to see partners and funding (like so many other development companies in this field), but until Apple actually lets developers at a clear, unedited stream from the videocamera, AR is still in the theoretical phase.But once again, the potential here is staggering. As I said, most of the things we've seen so far are based on text: hold your phone up, and have signs or other location-based information displayed to you. But when you start including 3D models into the mix, then things get really nuts: instead of just seeing tourist information, you could have a virtual guide show you around the museum. Or have a virtual hide and seek session with a creature that moves around the environment as you look for it. Other companies have been experimenting with AR on their own hardware, but Apple's combination of a video camera, a GPS/compass system, and a powerful handheld computer takes the possibility farther than we've seen it yet.[via Venturebeat]
Nerf the naughty
This idea from Terra Nova would certainly help clean up Barrens chat: nerfing characters as a penalty for bad behaviour in-game. If you use an alt to misbehave, then they'll all lose a level every time you break the bounds of decency.Key problems with this idea include inconsistency between GMs (we've already seen the trouble one slightly misguided GM can cause) and the systematic targeting of players; if you really want to hurt someone, get everyone you know to report them and suddenly they'll be back at level 0.As Terra Nova's commenters observe, social pressure and access control (making the players ashamed to misbehave, and banning them) are the most effective ways to control behaviour at the moment. However, if you lost a little bit of xp every time you called someone "gay" in general chat, you might well be less inclined to bigotry in public--the idea's got some potential.
