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Lost Pages of Taborea: Customization in Guild Wars 2 and Runes of Magic
It took me a little while, but you should know by now that I was going to do a Guild Wars 2 comparison. It's a little later than I previously said I'd write it, but there's no time like the present, right? Runes of Magic has been chugging along for over two years now, while GW2 is -- sort of -- just around the corner, and Guild Wars is the veteran of the bunch at six years of age. What do these MMOs have in common that would provoke me to attempt a comparison? I'll give you a hint: It has nothing to do with jumping. What they do share is character customization, which, really, many MMOs have. It's a pretty standard feature. In this week's Lost Pages of Taborea, I thought it would be interesting to take a look at how RoM could have taken some customization cues from GW, while GW2 might be taking some from RoM -- sort of like a movie based off a show based off a movie.
Lost Pages of Taborea: Tinkering with standard classes and my Priest/Rogue
Aside from some ancillary problems, one of the things I love so much about Runes of Magic is that it gives me ability to augment weapons and equipment via the arcane transmutor. When that is coupled with a dual-class system, players are given a lot of room to bend traditional classes to their wills. I've been running a Priest/Rogue for a while now and loving it. The selection of offensive spells, the Rogue's skills, and the weapons I can wield have me wanting to push the boundaries of typical class specifications. I'm building a hammer-wielding Priest that's specced much like I'd spec a Mage, but the class can also pump out adequate melee damage. In this week's Lost Pages of Taborea, I want to give you a run-down of the gear, weapons, and stats I'm choosing. It should serve as a good guide to some unique possibilities for classes in RoM.
Best Buy Mobile Upgrade Checker reveals other numbers on your Sprint account, invites scaremongering
Some crack reporting from an NBC affiliate news station has revealed a little foible in Best Buy's cellphone upgrade checking utility. If you punch in your Sprint mobile number and ZIP code, you get taken to a screen showing all the other numbers on your account as well. This applies only when yours is the main number on the account, mind you, but the issue is in the obviously lax approach to securing data you might care to keep private -- Verizon, AT&T and T-Mobile customers have to pass a security check first. Of course, the actual risks resulting from someone being able to find other numbers associated with your cellular account are so small as to verge on the benign ("somebody can use that... for something", as the KXAN report sagely advises), though that hardly excuses Best Buy from being sloppy with Sprint subscribers. They're human too, you know!
Buy once, install everywhere with Mac App Store
One of my favorite parts about the new Mac App Store is that it is "buy one, run everywhere" just like iOS apps on the iPad or iPhone/iPod touch. It has always been the case that you can buy an app at the iOS App Store and use it on all of your iOS devices. "Desktop" software has often been frustratingly limited to one or two computers. I'm thinking especially of the new Microsoft Office suite, but there are many, many other apps (especially ones from Adobe) which ties a license to a single (or sometimes two) machine. If you buy, say, The Incident for Mac for $3 from the Mac App Store, you can use it on all of your Macs. Simply launch the Mac App Store on your second (or third or fourth, etc) computer and look under "Purchases" and you will see all of the apps that you have purchased. Apps which are already installed will be shown as "Installed" and greyed out. Apps you can install will be shown in a black box labeled "Install." Click it and the app will automatically download and install to your /Applications/ folder. If you want to go right to that app's page, just tap-err, I mean click! the app icon and it will take you to the appropriate page. I'd love to see the iOS App Store be updated to have a list of purchases that I have made so I know which apps I have purchased but not yet installed. The Mac App Store's purchase history page is much better than the way iTunes manages your iOS purchases. Maybe Apple could call its next event "Back to the iOS!"
Lost Pages of Taborea: Quick, cheap high-level armor upgrades
The armor enhancement feature in Runes of Magic is undoubtedly insane. Between being able to add rune slots, raise tier levels, burn stats, raise durability and boost power rating, upgrading becomes a game of its own. I've noticed it adds an incredible level of complexity that can be confusing when I decided to upgrade my character. Could I just buy a ton of Purified Fusion Stones and up the tier of what I currently have, is it better to burn six green stats, or is it necessary to do everything? I've been tackling these issues, as I find myself wanting to speed up the rate at which I can solo -- post level 50. I sifted through a lot of the same game chatter, when I asked my question about which direction I could go to improve my attributes. Many answers pointed me to spending an exorbitant amount of real cash on Purified Fusion Stones and combining them with yellow stats -- if necessary -- until I was good enough to start making repeat runs through Cyclops Stronghold. That seemed to be a straightforward route, if money wasn't an issue. If I had enough money, I could just as easily buy pre-upgraded equipment from players selling it on world chat, or bought any combination of Mana Stones from the auction house. Then I'd have all the components I'd need to make very well-geared equipment customized with the exact stats I wanted. Unfortunately, the dollar I planted in the back yard failed to grow, and I'm stuck with limited funds. The other issue was that I just wanted to be good enough to smooth out the high level experience curve. I wasn't looking to solo instance bosses my level. I was looking for the middle of the road with an equal time investment.
Snow Leopard: In EULA we trust
Just before the release of Snow Leopard, Uncle Walt Mossberg did the unthinkable by writing that the $29 Leopard upgrade: "will work properly on ...Tiger equipped Macs, so you can save the extra $140." We reported that as well but didn't have all the facts verified at the time. Gizmodo likened Walt to a pirate and guessed that he'll have to apologize or at least clarify his position. Now, after buying the family edition, I have done every sort of installation known to man and have the facts. It seems that Walt was right, but he didn't tell you the whole story. You can take the $29 upgrade disc and install it over Leopard, over Tiger, or over a freshly formatted hard drive. The disc doesn't care. Regardless of whether you pay $29, $49 or $169, you get the same disc with the same capabilities. But just because you have a disc, if you use it for a purpose not intended upon purchase, you are breaking your agreement with Apple. The contents of the disc are the property of Apple and how that intellectual property is to be used is determined by the EULA (End User License Agreement) that you agree to before installation. For each method of purchase the EULA is different. For the $169 package which includes iLife '09 and iWork '09 this is what you agree to: "A. Single Use License. Subject to the terms and conditions of this License, unless you have purchased a Family Pack or Upgrade license for the Apple Software, you are granted a limited non-exclusive license to install, use and run one (1) copy of the Apple Software on a single Apple-branded computer at a time. You agree not to install, use or run the Apple Software on any non-Apple-branded computer, or to enable others to do so. This License does not allow the Apple Software to exist on more than one computer at a time, and you may not make the Apple Software available over a network where it could be used by multiple computers at the same time." Clear enough. You can use it on one computer. It doesn't say that you need any operating system to start with. I would assume that you can put it on as many hard disks as you want, as long as you only use those hard disks with one specified computer.
The $29 Snow Leopard upgrade: usable for 10.4 Intel Macs as well?
Walt Mossberg has answered a Snow Leopard upgrade question that has been on just about everyone's mind. Do you need the full $169 box set if you are upgrading from Tiger? The answer is apparently no, not exactly, although that is what's required by Apple's EULA. You will be able to install the $29 individual upgrade or $49 family upgrade on any Intel Mac regardless of whether it's already running Leopard. According to Uncle Walt, as posted on the All Things Digital site: "Apple concedes that the $29 Snow Leopard upgrade will work properly on these Tiger-equipped Macs, so you can save the extra $140." What's not 100% clear from this report is whether the Snow Leopard install would work as an upgrade, or only as a clean install (on a newly formatted drive), as Lifehacker suggests. Since some experienced Mac users prefer to do a clean install with every major OS upgrade -- either reinstalling apps and files from backup, or using Migration Assistant to pull over from the old configuration -- this may not be a drawback for everyone. Wired's preview of Snow Leopard (based on a pre-release version of the OS) suggests that they were able to do an upgrade install from 10.4 straight to 10.6 using the conventional SL disc, but your mileage may vary. So there you have it. If you have Leopard running on your Intel machine, you will be fine with the $29 single or $49 family versions on sale Friday morning. If you're willing to wipe down your Tiger install and start fresh, the $29 installer will probably work for you too -- but you'll be in violation of Apple's licensing agreement, making you an OS pirate. Just so you know.
Ask TUAW: More migration, expanding Apple's Dictionary, syncing iPhone notes, and more
Welcome back to Ask TUAW, our weekly Mac troubleshooting Q&A column! This time we've got more questions on migrating user data when upgrading to Snow Leopard, expanding Apple's built-in Dictionary application, accessing iPhone notes without Mail.app, and more.As always, your suggestions and questions are welcome. Questions for next week should be left in the comments. When asking a question please include which machine you're running and which version of Mac OS X (we'll assume you're running Leopard on an Intel Mac if you don't specify). And now, on to the questions.
Leopard: Should you upgrade?
Last night, during our weekly podcast, we ended up having quite the heated discussion about whether people should upgrade to Leopard now or not. In the end, we pretty much all ended up agreeing that many people should not. Here are a few of the points brought up. If you have only one computer and it's your production machine, don't upgrade. The 10.5 upgrade is a big one--not a small update, not a few bug fixes. Lots of stuff gets broken and if you need to keep getting your work done, just wait. Let a few dot releases ease things out. If you work with Adobe software and need your software to work reliably, don't upgrade. Apple didn't get its gold master out to third party developers in time for the upgrade path to proceed smoothly. Everything was rush, rush, rush. Developers simply did not have the time to work with the final product and make sure their apps would be compatible. If you need Acrobat (and I do) or In Design, you need Tiger. Don't upgrade to Leopard. If you work with Windows, don't upgrade. Windows networking isn't working so good, according to several of our panelists who need to connect to Win machines on a regular basis. If you have a lot of system customizations, don't upgrade. Many customizer tools like APE (application enhancer) are broken with the Leopard upgrade. You can do a clean Leopard install but you probably don't want to upgrade at this time. So what do you do if you really want to give Leopard a spin? I recommend dual booting. Keep your Tiger installation now for the real work and add a Leopard partition to play.
