SirBruce recently released an updated version of his MMO subscription charts, which are available on MMOGChart.com. I love looking at statistics and trying to draw conclusions from them. I have a few pieces that I wanted to post here, all of which I already knew, but it’s nice to have data to back the conclusions up. Proceed beyond the break for all of the goods. Continue Reading »

Scott Jennings is being bullied by lawyers. It makes me mad, and it makes Matt Mihaly mad too. I’m going to follow his lead by mirroring Lum’s post (which will be down tonight) on Nerfbat for a short period of time. Dear lawyers, I’m going to get rid of this in a few days anyway, so there’s really no need to send me a scary ass email telling me to take it down. Continue Reading »

Welcome back to the interwebz, SirBruce. A lot has changed since you last contributed a fancy chart to the world. Games have come and gone, WoW has crested above the 10 million mark, and 38 Studios has come to life. While he still can’t spell my name (there’s no “C” in it!), he has returned. Visit MMOGChart.com for his latest comparison of MMO subscriptions. P.S. I still think the “MMOG” acronym is more correct than “MMO,” but even I have given it up–keep up the good fight, SirBruce.

This month’s Boston Post Mortem is on Wednesday, February 13, 2008. The speaker is Chris Foster, Senior Designer at Harmonix, whose talk is entitled, “Your Music Is the Game: Designing PHASE, the Other Project at Harmonix.” This meeting will take place at The Skellig in Waltham, and is sponsored by Harmonix. You can find more information at the Boston Post Mortem website.

It’s time to give credit where credit’s due. In Game Update #42, my old coworkers at SOE added epics to EQII. This includes weapons for adventure classes as well as cloaks for the tradeskill classes. From what little I’ve seen of the epic weapons for adventurers, they look great (and I can’t wait to see screenshots). What I have seen are shots of the epic cloaks for crafters, and holy crap are they beautiful. These are the best looking cloaks I have ever seen in any game, not just MMOs. Great job all around. See them here.

I don’t know how I didn’t pick up on this sooner. Shadowbane’s Patch 22 will apparently reboot the entire game. No, not the servers. The game. Like a comic book reboot, only much deadlier to the franchise. They are planning on deleting everything–characters, cities, items… everything. Every single thing players have ever worked for will be deleted. Not just for inactive accounts, but for all of them. I don’t think it’s necessary to comment further.

I’m going to say it’s a two-way tie this week. First off, we have Fox News, who reported that Mass Effect has explicit sex, full-frontal nudity, and that the game is marketed to children. All of these claims, of course, are completely false, and I wish they hadn’t run such misinformation on their network. The second is the Parents Television Council, who denounced the Entertainment Software Association for its intent to form a Political Action Committee. Continue Reading »

Inspired by the recent buzz about Warhammer Online possibly costing more than $15/month to play and a post by Nybling on the forums, I’ve created a poll asking how much you would pay to play. The scenario: Your favorite game of the moment–be that WoW, EQII, LotRO, or anything else–raises its monthly subscription rate. How much would you be willing to pay? Do you draw the line at the current standard of $15/month? Would you pay more if they made expansions free? Go to the forums and vote in the thread!

If so, what server? I’ve made my obligatory “Captain Morgan” clone, a hot chick, and a character I might actually play. All are on Blackbeard right now, but I’ll play wherever. My first impressions are the same as my old beta impressions: good game, reminds me of old school Pirates! The main drawback is pacing, which can be slow. Sailing is far too slow, especially when the wind is against you (I understand why, but it doesn’t make it fun). But, I think I’m going to have a good time as a merchant of opportunity, and I’ll continue to hope that they make ship combat faster (note to self: email friends at SOE and maybe they’ll talk to Flying Lab).

The January 2008 Boston Post Mortem will be Wednesday, January 16 at The Skellig in Waltham. This game developer meeting will be sponsored by CIDC, which means free appetizers and a single free beverage for those who go. There will be 8 speakers talking about various topics ranging from why Portal is the most perfect game ever to the finer points of contracting. More information can be found at the Boston Post Mortem site.