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Wings Over Atreia: Aion's 2012 naughty and nice list
The end is near! No, not of the world -- the end of 2012. And as is customary at the conclusion of a year, we look back over the past 12 months to assess the damage... er, I mean, review the highlights. This year, however, I'm not going to just ruminate on the top stories in Wings Over Atreia; I'm going to spice things up a bit with a naughty and nice list! That's right, folks; we are delving into both the great and the not-so-great things that have transpired in Aion since January. So bust out the spiced mela cider, grab a plate of gingerbread shugos, and join me as I make a list and check it twice to see how NCsoft has been naughty and nice.
Best iPhone games of the year picks start to roll in
Gamasutra wins the award for being the first (that I've seen) to pick awards for their best five iPhone games of the year, and the list is respectable, if a little short for such a huge set of possibility. Unfortunately, they don't win any TUAW points for going with Skee-Ball over our preferred Ramp Champ, but Rolando 2 was a worthy sequel to a worthy game, Edge (now Edgy) and Eliss are both great games (too bad you can't play the former, but the latter was underrated for sure), and Space Invaders Infinity Gene deserves to be on almost any end-of-the-year iPhone game list. Good picks in there for sure. DigitalTrends also has a long list, though strangely, they tend to stick to big names and brands. There are a few gems in there -- Spider, UniWar, and Vay may be a couple good choices that you haven't heard of yet. And here's another top 10 list with some repeats from the ones above and a few more nice picks. I guess with the end of the year upon us, we'll probably have to choose TUAW's favorites of 2009, too, eh? Stay tuned.
AchievementTracker tracks achievements across the realms
Reader Jeffrey R. was kind enough to send us his achievement tracking site, named (conveniently) AchievementTracker.com. We've seen quite a few sites for tracking achievements on your own character out there already (especially since the Armory opened up the information to the web), but unlike the others, AchievementTracker seems to be focusing on ranking only -- instead of browsing over your own information, all the site really presents is a list of the top players in the world, US, EU, or by the various realms.There are a few caveats, the first being that they're only tracking characters above level 70, and the second being that they're not tracking everyone -- I had to put my own character into the system (though that won't matter if you're just looking for the top players, since I would never even rank on any lists anyone was watching). And while WoW-Achievements has Beelsebub of EU Darksorrow at number one and Minipuff of EU Stormscale in second place so far, AchievementTracker has them backwards (and their point totals are lower -- maybe Armory lag?).And of course we don't know for sure if there's someone on the realms that neither of these sites are tracking with more achievement points (it may be worth noting, too, that beyond Armory links, neither site tells us much about the characters -- is there a class or spec that's better for achievement point earning?). It'll probably take a little while until we can get a standard for tracking these, but until then, looks like we'll have a few different lists to watch.
Loken the most dangerous mob in the game
The Top Lists on the official World of Warcraft website are endlessly interesting and fascinating. The last time we looked at them was well before Wrath launched, so we decided to take a look again now that we've been in Northrend for awhile.The first list I looked at was, of course, the Most Dangerous Creatures. What's more fun than seeing what's destroying your fellow players? Nothing. Nothing at all. It looks like Loken of Halls of Lightning is topping the charts right now, followed by Sapphiron of Naxxramas. I can see that. Loken can be pretty deadly, especially on Heroic. Most players will probably wipe to him at least once their first time seeing him, assuming they don't know the strategy ahead of time. Sapphiron is just plain painful.
The strange economy of the App Store
A few App Store apps have already gotten the public browbeating for tweaking their prices, and here's another: as Johnathan notes, there's a new app on the top of the heap in the paid pile, and apparently the only reason "Units Convertor" (sic) is there is because it used to be free.We can't necessarily call them out for switching just to sit on top -- what would you do if you had a free app that was being downloaded like crazy and decided you wanted to make some money from it? But being that free apps far outweigh paid apps in terms of distribution, even the #21 free app can quickly jump to the top of the paid pile. We've already posted about how developers might be getting a raw deal out of the App Store (and some publishers have told us personally that they agree), but the economics are very interesting in there right now -- you've got a basically free economy, and considering that most of the apps out now are easy to make, it's just as likely that you'll see a free version of an app that does the same thing as a paid app.Of course, what's happening in there actually mirrors what's happening out here with software: some of the best applications around are actually being given away for free. We're still in a strange place with the App Store and its pricing, and you have to think that eventually things will settle down and the developers who deserve to get paid will.
