YouTube Suspended My Account ...

… and deleted all my videos! Including that “Darkfall is Coming” video!

Damn.

I don't know why. There was no copyrighted material in my videos. The music I got from Newgrounds (free to use), and I strongly doubt that in-game footage from EQ2 or Oblivion counts as copyright infringement.

I didn't even get a warning. I just clicked YouTube on my bookmarks and *POOF* … all gone.

:'(

EDIT - My account is back up for some reason. Did someone falsely flag one of my videos I wonder? Hopefully it will stay up now.

Hopefully.

Dawn of War 2 can go fuck itself

What the hell is it with games publishers insisting that you have to download and sign up to loads of different services just to play their worthless games!?!

You can tell I'm pissed. That's because I've just spent a whole hour trying to install and play Dawn of War 2.

The CD should be enough. Slap it in, install the damn thing, then play, but NOOOOOOOOO. It can't be that simple. You've got to download Steam and set up an account., giving them all your details and stuff too. Once you've done that it still won't let you play the fucking game until you set up an Windows Live account too.

Personally I don't like giving my email address to these corporate scum bag types because they'll just spam your inbox with 'offers' and crap, but hey, no choice. Then there was the 'Gamer Tag'. What the fuck is a gamer tag? Whatever I put in it didn't like so I game up and spammed in “sitgdsajlhfsljhfgweusghfsljdhb” or something.

Fuck off Microsoft … I just want to try the fucking game.

Signed up. Restarted the game though Steam (which was spamming my desktop with ads). Tried to play. A Windows Live window popped up over the game asking for my account and password. I entered them in. It accepted them, but by that stage I was too pissed off with all that shit, and with wasting a whole fucking hour, to play the fucking game so I just exited it, ejected the disc, put it back in it's case … and threw the fucking thing right across the room.

Fuck you Dawn of War 2 and fuck you Microsoft. Please go die in a fire.

Games are supposed to be about fun, not about being forced to sign up to dozens of crappy services that you do not want.

Yay for new fangled technology!

In this case, external sound cards.


Anyway, I got my PC back from the repair shop and found that I had a problem with the sound. The front two speakers were barely producing useful sound. Simple sounds you barely noticed the difference, but music had a certain 1930's wireless quality to it when played.


It was in for repair because the power supply unit failed and took out the motherboard. That was repaired, but what killed the motherboard must have damaged the sound card too. Attempts to get the on-board sound from the new motherboard failed. Vista wouldn't even detect that capability, no matter what discs and drivers I put in the 'offering tray'.


I'd already spent a load of money on getting the thing fixed the first time so I didn't fancy doing that again, for a while a least. I searched Amazon for sound cards, checking out prices, and found that they make … external sound cards now.


External


o_O


I ordered one. It arrived the next morning. I plugged it in. Vista detected it and installed the drivers. It worked.


From plugging the USB in, to the external card working, was a matter of seconds.


Best thirty quid spent ever, especially since it saved me time and money (ie - labour costs) in getting the PC properly functional again.


Yay!


External sound cards. External hard drives. External disc drives. All we need now are external graphics cards since, you know, they are the most likely part of your PC to be upgraded. A PC could just be a motherboard, power unit and USB hub which everything else just plugs into.


That would make repairs and upgrades so much more convenient and easy.

Spore is Doomed

Yes. Doomed.

You would think that a game that was as hyped as Spore, which came from the same people as The Sims, which had a HUGE budget and many years of development would be as likely to fail as water is to spontaneously combust. Well, you would think that would be the case but it seems that between shallow gameplay and a poorly disguised contempt for their customers, EA have managed exactly that.

Contempt for customers?

Included with your legally purchased copy of Spore is SecuROM which is installed on your computer alongside Spore. Apart from the very serious problems that SecuROM can bring to a PC system, it also limits the number of 'activations' of the game to just three for the legal purchaser.

Three.

For the game you paid for.

Basically EA expects you to pay full purchase price for a game that you will be renting for just three installs.

How many times have you installed one of your favourite games that you've been playing for years and years after the original purchase? Four times? Six times? More? With people upgrading their PC's, buying new ones, recovering from hard-drive failures, re-installing the operating system after particularly bad computer fuck-ups etc the average gamer will run out of 'activations' very rapidly. I myself have gone though three new PC's and five hard-drives (Dell sucks) in just four years.

Thinking about it now, I've had 5 separate computers in 7 years.

So how long will three installs last for you?

Obviously Spore fans are livid about this. They've been retaliating against EA by giving thousands of one-star reviews on Amazon.com (US link and UK link). To date out of 3,059 customer reviews at Amazon.com, 2,603 rated the game 1 star out of 5.

Of course some initial post-release customer dissatisfaction shouldn't really hurt the success of the game, so long as the game is as amazing as it was hyped up to be.

Unfortunately it's not.

Yahtzee, of Zero Punctuation fame, gave a good video review of Spore that covers everything quite nicely. Some of his criticisms (shallow gamepley for example) are repeated in many other reviews.

Spore has barely been out for a month yet if you check out the Xfire figures for Spore you will see that they are collapsing faster than Age of Conan ever did.


Shallow gameplay? That's a big 'yes' I think.

Of course EA has since turned around and decreed that their customers will get five 'activations' instead of the original three.

[sarcasm] Oh, how their customers must feel loved! [/sarcasm]

EA just don't get it. People don't like getting fucked-over. And they don't have to buy any particular game at all. Had Spore been as amazing as The Sims then many people would have just bought Spore anyway and just swallowed the customer abuse that came with it. However, very few people are going to volunteer to that kind of customer-shafting just for an average game.

How many copies of Spore does EA need to sell to pay for their development costs? Some speculate 8 million, which is a huge figure, but knowing just how successful 'The Sims' was, Spore could easily have justified such a big development budget purely on the assumption that Spore would have been equally successful. That will not be the case though.

In summary, Spore is doomed.

Interestingly, Spore is rapidly becoming the most pirated game in history as Spore fans, not wanting to be ripped off by the rent-a-game policy of EA, have opted to download the cracked version, which doesn't come with limited 'activations'. This has to be one of the only instances where anti-piracy measures actually fuel piracy instead.

My Two Pennies

A two weeks ago or so, Aventurine released a HUGE 17-minute Darkfall in-game trailer. Though any game trailer of that length more than deserves the title 'huge', knowing that it is from Aventurine (a small indie developer who have previously only released short videos amounting to only one or two minutes each) makes the video doubly significant.


The video was released alongside the commencing of beta sign-ups, and since this is Darkfall that we are talking about, it obviously created quite a stir. A game that was once dismissed as 'vaporware' by the majority of the gaming community is now attracting a lot of attention.

Since the video's release and the beta announcement Forumfall has been deluged by new members signing up. Forumfall's membership doubled in a week, while over on mmorpg.com the Darkfall forum surged to the second most popular section after Warhammer Online, mirroring Darkfall's "hype meter" on that site.

This, barely a week after beta sign-ups began. Just wait until beta starts in October.


Of course the reason behind the levels of interest is the feature set that Darkfall promises. Since the release of the original Everquest and World of Warcraft, the mmorpg genre and industry have been stuck producing endless copies of a game format that is known to generate revenue. In that environment a large development house would be reckless in investing millions on developing a game that did not follow the direction of previously released games.

So basically the mmorpg genre has been stuck in a format that was well suited to the days when mmorpg's were in their infancy, and dominated by nerds, but doesn't suit todays gamer particularly well.


Let me break this down to the individual issues that the current crop of mmorpg's have.

1 – Levels/grind

To progress you character you must gain levels. To gain levels you must obtain experience points. To obtain experience points you must complete quests and kill an awful lot of critters. The thing is people don't want to complete 40 quests or slay 600 generic beasties just to gain a level. You're not playing the game at that point - you're just jumping through hoops.

It's also grind ... and it's boring.

Compare that system with Oblivion's system which doesn't have experience points. In Oblivion you level by gaining ten skill points across your core skills. You gain these skill points by using your skills. The result of that is the elimination of grind. You don't need to kill X number of critter type Y or complete Z number of quests to level. You just play and have fun and your character gains skill points in the process.

Aventurine have gone one step further and have abandoned the level system altogether. Darkfall is 100% skill based. You raise your skills by using them, ie – by playing and having fun. Higher skill levels lead to more potent abilities.

So if you're a player who enjoys being a tank type, or a mage, or a healer, or whatever, the mere act of playing the way you enjoy most improves your character AS a tank, mage, healer or whatever.

So people are hoping that Darkfall will be a mmorpg that isn't (*gasps*) filled with boring grind.


2 – Combat (subtitled 'combat' – notice the inverted commas)

In a mmorpg combat involves parking next to a critter, putting your hand-brake on and toggling the auto-attack. For the next couple of minutes your eyes are glued to the reuse timers on your hotbar. Every 4-6 seconds or so you get to click one of your abilities. Combat is basically "click ... wait ... click ... wait ...click ... wait", and though your avatar is having a great time going through all his combat animations, for you the player it is mind numbingly boring.

It is for this reason that the rest of the gaming industry does not touch the auto-attack and hotbar system. Why would they want to make their games boring? The only reason the auto-attack system remains in mmorpg's is because, like I have previously said, big developers have become too conservative and averse to 'risky' change, fearing a poor return on their investment.


FPS style combat, whether in shooters or Oblivion type games, is undeniably fun. The player is completely immersed in the actual mechanics of combat, rather than just once every six seconds like in mmorpg's. A few small developers have actually taken the risk in introducing FPS combat in their mmorpg games – WW2Online and Planetside come to mind – but the majority of the market is in the fantasy side of the genre which is dominated by the click-and-wait system.

Darkfall uses full FPS style combat, whether it is swords, spells, arrows or cannons that are being used. That's "fun box number 2" ticked off for Darkfall.


3 – PvP, mounted combat and vehicles/ships (in PvP)

PvP is a complete joke in most mmorpg's. Because of the level system, you are not competitive in PvP unless you're maxed out. In some games high levels prey on lower level characters that don't stand a chance (broken PvP). In other games where they have restrictions you can't attack someone that is X number of levels above or below you, or in certain areas (carebear PvP). In most mmorpg's the PvP is pointless and only amounts to glorified duels or ganking. In games where the PvP has been poorly thought out you can be ganked while you're helplessly stuck in a cut-scene dialogue with an NPC.

And those are just the problems that a level system brings to PvP. The auto-attack system brings more problems and restrictions.

Want to fight on a mount? Sure thing! Want to fight REAL mounted combat that isn't just a glorified speed bonus? Not in a mmorpg with auto-attack. In a system where you have to select a target and toggle auto-attack on, genuine mounted combat is impossible. You can't run down characters on foot, swiping them as you pass. You can't engage in mounted verses mounted combat where both sides are desperately trying to out-manoeuvre their opponent so they can attack, avoid attack and defend themselves effectively against their opponent (ever played Mount & Blade?).

Want to man a cannon on a friend's ship and REALLY blast other ships? Want to conduct ship-to-shore bombardment against other players? Not in a game that uses auto-attack ... and the latter would actually be considered 'griefing' in games using auto-attack. Auto-attack adds unnecessary restrictions to the mechanics of PvP combat.

Without PvP tripping over levels or auto-attack, Darkfall promises fun PvP.

I want to go through the recent video and give my two pennies on it so if you haven't already, download the 17-minute Darkfall video from below so that you know what I'm talking about.

http://forums.darkfallonline.com/showthread.php?t=64217

The first thing of significance you notice very early on is that when someone is 'killed' they merely become incapacitated and are left helplessly writhing on the ground. At that point they can be either resuscitated by a friend of finished off by an enemy. I play a few shooters that use a similar concept of 'healing' the fallen so I know that is a good gameplay element. Firstly, casualties won't have an irritatingly long run ahead of them after respawning in order to get back into the action (assuming their buddies keep control of the battleground). Secondly, healer character types are going to be incredibly important in any successful attack or defence.

Healers are going to have so many friends in Darkfall.


The mounts are amazing and are beautifully animated. Have a look at around 14:00 in the video and you'll see that unlike other mmorpg's, where mounts remain upright when they run up or down a hill, in Darkfall they actually run up and down slopes realistically. That scene at 14:00 blew me away. I also notice that at 6:12 the mounts also have a backwards walking animation (so no more Moonwalking™) and seem to lean into sharp turns (17:03). They also have forward and backwards attacks (14:48). The mounted combat looks amazing.


I didn't see any Shulgan Drakes (the Alfar racial mount). I'm guessing the inclusion of them in an already awesome video would have breached the maximum safe limits of awesomeness and cause people's heads to explode. Though all the mounts were excellent, the animation of the Garmir Rams (14:22) was especially so.


There's a large number of different ships types 10 minutes into the video. There's everything from tiny 3-gun boats to mind-bogglingly huge ships with two or three full gun decks. I don't think I can stress that enough. I've never heard of player ships being that stupendously big in other mmorpg's or FPS games. Never. Those ships are probably the largest player vehicles in any online game, and when I say that I mean vehicles that you can run about in and not EVE Online type vehicles where player = vehicle.

I noticed that in the two gun-deck (11:04) and three gun-deck (11:51) ships that not all the gun ports had cannons. Some were just left empty and some were covered by some kind of sliding door (11:48). I'm going to speculate that the cannons are a separate endeavour to the ships themselves. Meaning you first build the ship, then build the cannons with which to outfit the ship.

I counted 25 cannons on one side of that 3-decker, meaning 50 cannons total, but there are 72 gun ports in all, empty and occupied. A ship like that would easily be the pride and joy of well organised clan.

You could probably squeeze a couple of thousand players on that ship.


O.O

If you look at 7:10 and 14:21 you have shore bombardment going on. In game, I doubt that point-blank bombardment like that would happen unless the risk to the ship was minimal. A ship is a big, easy, expensive target. In a game like Joint Operations you would do it from beyond visual range. It's a lot less accurate but it's a useful way to harass the enemy and can be devastating if you have spotters telling you where your rounds are going.

Likewise, ship-to-ship combat would probably be done at the maximum visible range feasible, to make your ship as difficult a target to hit as possible, with the long-range shooting skills of the gunners being the decisive factor in any engagement, but this is just speculation.


The magic is going to be one of the most interesting aspects of the game, and not just because you have to aim your attacks. If you check out 4:18 you'll see a very short clip of people using magic to jump from one ship to another. The same technique is used at 6:30 to jump over a rock. At 3:38 an Alfar archer uses magic to levitate himself up a tree. I'm assuming that the same type of spell can get people up onto roofs too. Then there are multiple times in the video where spells send enemies flying (1:34, 1:44, 2:44, 15:19). You can imagine situations where a narrow path or bridge can be effectively held by a small number of magic users against a much larger force.



If you look at 15:45 you will see three types of warhulks, the existence of which has stirred up much debate on the forums. Personally I like them.

In the video there are three types. The blue ones appear to be giant floating guns that have what looks like a short range electrical gun covering the access ladder at the rear. I'm guessing they're used in attacking fortifications. The large white one looks like it works like an apc that can transport lots of people safely though dangerous spots. It's pretty much an empty box with two separate stairs at the rear and a small gun on top. The black ones are interesting because apart from the large front and rear facing guns, they also have a pair of flame throwers on the sides that were used to destroy the wooden defences which begs the question "are wooden defences vulnerable to fire attacks?" Can wooden defences be upgraded to stone I wonder?

Looking at the style of all three I'm speculating that these are the Ork/Mahirim racial versions of warhulks.

Some people are claiming that these "hover tanks" are game breaking. I don't think that's true and I'll explain why. Have a look at 17:06. You'll see a human in one of the warhulks attacking the crew. These warhulks appear to be slow moving so if you can get up the access ladders you can kill the crew and take the warhulk for your clan. In areas that have lots of places to hide (inside cities, rocky areas, wooded areas etc) warhulks are going to be vulnerable to infantry. In open areas these slow moving warhulks are going to be vulnerable to cavalry that can move and manoeuvre faster than they can. You'll also notice that the defenders of that city seemed to be throwing battle spikes (anti-vehicle/building grenades) at them. You may even be able to snipe at the crew with arrows/spells since the crew positions are exposed.

For every fighting style there will be a counter, I'm sure.



The PvE (8:47 – 9:37) looks like a lot of fun since the critters are running about just like players in a FPS game, and are not static as is the norm in mmorpg's. They also have brains enough to change weapons mid-fight (9:18).

The PvE section of the video was the only part where you saw player gravestones, despite all the combat in the video. For the uninitiated, a gravestone is what appears after someone has 'finished off' an incapacitated player – or if the player decides to respawn instead of waiting for resuscitation. Once your corpse becomes a gravestone all your gear can be looted from it. It reminded me of a developer update, where it was said that the critters could loot fallen players and then use their equipment. Is that why we only saw gravestones there? Because the AI critters automatically finish off and loot players? That would be my guess.

So if you've got a Flaming Sword of Pwnage and some critter lops off your head, guess who will be wielding your sword when you run back to your gravestone?

That would be so awesome.


With all the in-game things I have mentioned above - the abandonment of the level and auto-attack systems, removal of boring grind, the ship combat, the mounts, the cities etc – Darkfall is going to be an amazing game. Knowing that there is a large population of players that are sick to the back teeth with WoW-clone cookie-cutter mmorpg's I'd say that Darkfall could become massive too. Not just 'massive' EVE Online style with around 200,000 subscribers, but massive WOW style with millions of subscribers. Darkfall is offering a unique feature set within the fantasy mmorpg genre, with many of the individual features being completely unique within the genre. For that reason Darkfall will attract a lot of attention. Players who shuttle from one mmorpg to another mmorpg in a vain search for something different and fun will find that Darkfall has both.

tl:dr version – w00t! Darkfall is AWESOME!!!

The Russian leadership has less brain cells than a bag of potatoes.

Well, yeah. What do they think they are achieving in Georgia? Sure, they fret over the onward expansion of Nato, and mourn the loss of their regional power and influence enjoyed during the Soviet era, but invading a small boarding country just so they can annex two tiny territories within Georgia - with populations of just a few tens of thousands – isn't going to extend Russian power. In fact it will only hurt Russia.

Remember earlier in this decade when the Russians repeatedly cut gas supplies to neighbouring states in an effort to bully nations like Ukraine and Georgia? What was the long-term reaction? Europe, Russia's biggest energy customer, started to source energy from more reliable suppliers elsewhere (like North Africa and Central Asia) and pipelines taking Caspian energy to the world markets were routed around, and not through, Russia. Georgia, once completely dependent on Russia for energy, now imports it from elsewhere.

The result of those earlier energy blockades has left Russia in a weaker position as an energy supplier, something that will only become more profound as Russian production, already past its peak, dwindles.

What do they think the reaction will be after this Georgian action? Do they expect Eastern European nations to turn their back on Nato and throw themselves at Russia's feet? In reality this is only going to push Eastern Europe closer to the West.

What does Nato offer? It offers collective defence and security. Membership is wholly voluntary.

What does the EU offer? It offers economic integration and development. Membership is wholly voluntary.

What does Russia offer? Threats of military force, unreliable energy supplies, threats of nuclear attack (in the case of Poland) and weak rule of law in business where the state just takes what it wants in regards to oil companies.

They've played the oil card, and that got taken away. They have now played the military card. What do they think is going to happen if they try that again with Ukraine or Moldova? The world is now distrustful and suspicious of Russian intensions. Any attempt to invade and annex big chunks of Ukraine or Moldova is going to see the West smack Russia down, hard.

You see, at the end of the Day Russia is weak. Their economic revival is dependent upon energy exports, which are vulnerable to sanctions, and are declining anyway. Their military are dependent upon ancient Soviet era hardware that has seen precious little technological advancement since the Soviet Union collapsed almost 20 years ago. Their bullying tactics over the last decade has left Russia without any significant allies.

What's going to happen now? I can hazard a few guesses. There will be on-going and increasing international pressure on Russia to remove its troops from Georgia proper. It's a hostile occupation that will become increasingly more obvious the longer Russian troops are within Georgia. The West are going to quietly help the Georgians strengthen their defences. There may even be US bases in the country to 'protect' the oil pipelines that carry energy from the Caspian region. Ukraine will probably get into Nato faster.

This is the 21st century and the Russian leadership needs to stop seeing Nato as a rival and/or a threat and join the institution in providing continental security instead.

The people at FilePlanet are SO cruel!

According to FilePlanets blog the next "stupendously huge" beta coming to that site will be ... well ... they're not saying.

What's wrong with that you might ask? Well, instead of just telling us, or not telling us, they're dropping hints instead, which is giving rise to huge amounts of speculation since the hints could relate so several massively anticipated games approaching open beta and/or release.

Their first blog post on the subject had a hidden message in the text. Certain letters were in a just-about-perceivable bold typeface, which together spelled out "darkness is soon".

Of course us Darkfall fans can interpret that to mean Darkfall since the term "Soon™" is often used by the community to describe the ETA on any and all developer updates, beta dates, release dates, or whatever ... because of Darkfall's lengthy development time. Added to that the blog's title of "Yes, it's coming ...", a possible reference to the most viewed Darkfall video currently out there ("Darkfall is Coming"), and people are salivating with speculation.

BUT.

Those things could also refer to a couple of other games. Warhammer Online comes to mind since "War is Coming" is a Warhammer thing. "Darkness is soon" could also refer to "The Secret World" which is subtitled "Dark Days are Coming".

Then of course the second blog post on the subject comes along which is titled "Patience is Virtue". Could that be a reference to how patient Darkfall fans have had to be over the years? Possibly, but for the first time ever in that blog the first letter of each post is a big capitalised letter ... so far spelling W ... A ...

If the next post begins with a R we can assume it's the WARhammer beta ... but I'll bet they do something else to confuse us all futher.

Fuckers.

AoC bombed

Relatively speaking.

It released only two months ago yet players are abandoning it like rats from a listing ship. According to Blizzard, 40% of players who left WoW to try AoC have already returned.

"Age of Conan released with some initial success a couple of months ago, and we did see some of our players leave to try the game. However, we've seen about 40 percent of those players return to World of Warcraft."

http://www.massively.com/2008/08/01/blizzard-yes-some-players-left-for-aoc/

Meanwhile on X-fire, Age of Conan plunged from the number 4 most played game (for X-fire users) shortly after release all the way down to the number 20 spot in two months. They went from 75,000 in-game hours a day, down to 13,000 hours today.

http://www.xfire.com/games/

Though people say that the game was over hyped, I think the problem lies more in the game being booted out the door in an unfinished state. Had the game been finished then it would have deserved the hype. As it was Funcom made the same mistake as Sigil did with Vanguard (though their too-early release was forced) and SoE (EQ2, though 'successful', was released unfinished which probably led to it not achieving its expected success (it was still fun though)).

Because of the time investment required to play a mmorpg, the game-player relationship is rather like a marriage.

The father (the developer) dresses his daughter (the game) in an expensive bridal gown on the magic day ... but he rushes her out the door too fast and she slips and does a face plant on the concrete footpath. She turns up at the altar spitting teeth and trying to stem the blood from a broken nose, while the father attempts to assure the groom (the player) that his daughter will heal and get better.

To which the groom replies - "Riiiight ... I'll just go and shack back up with my old girlfriend while I wait for that to happen then" and walks off.

Age of Conan was competing against a market saturated with (now) complete and polished mmorpgs, especially the giant - WoW. Any company that releases their product substantially short of complete in today's market is going to be punished by the players.

AoC X-fire figures have not stabilised yet. They're still falling and they're not too far above EVE Online in the X-fire rankings. EVE Online is of course a (admittedly large) niche game with a strong and dedicated player-base. What does that say about Age of Conan, the game that was supposed to give World of Warcraft a run for its money?

It's just a niche game.

Here's a fun review -> http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/zero-punctuation/138-Age-of-Conan

The next game to "give World of Warcraft a run for its money" is Warhammer Online. I suspect they could do it too, and not just because WAR is the next big upcoming mmorpg title that we are all hearing about.

For one thing the Warhammer universe has an even bigger following than Age of Conan or World of Warcraft (at least at WoW's launch ;p ) so all the Warhammer fans will pile into the game whether they are a mmorpg players or not. Not only that, but the developers appear to have drawn lessons from WoW's success. Instead of AoC style, ultra-realistic, high-poly, GPU crippling graphics, Warhammer Online looks more like an updated version of WoW (low poly models and textures that don't have to be of a ultra-high resolution to look convincing) so it'll run on average computers quite happily.

Of course if WAR is booted out the door too early and does a Vanguard/AoC style face-plant then Blizzard will have yet another head for their trophy room.

My fridge is now the most awesome thing in my kitchen

Yay for Ctrl-Alt-Del fridge magnets!

Damn Forums.

For the last three weeks now I've been trying to get on with another issue of Dimfall only to find that my forum addiction keeps dragging me away from doing anything productive. There's nothing more wasteful in time and effort than talking to retards on the interwebs ... except lurking and watching retards talk on the interwebs perhaps.

I follow too many forums to be honest.

Warcry is ok but not very active. Debating with the vaportrolls over there is fun since the vaportrolls have neither numbers nor brain cells to defend their arguments effectively. Warcry is like an online shooter where you can just play for an hour or so for fun.

Coles is a little more active, political and right-wing, but it's a fun forum since the people and rules are fairly relaxed there. If you're liberal-minded and want an instant engaging debate with 'the other side' then I'd recommend Coles. You only have to start a 'liberal' thread to guarantee a fairly good quality debate with the 'righties'.

MMORPG.com? It's a festering cess pit that has been taken over by the vaportrolls and more resembles a maggot infested corpse than a gaming forum. At least in the Darkfall section. Multiple accounts, blatant trolling and weak anti-troll moderation are the norm there. It's fun to lurk though since the trolls come out with some of the most outrageously comical stuff, in a tin-foil hat kind of way. I'm genuinely convinced that some of them are either obsessive types or mentally ill outright.

There has always been rampant trolling/smearing/negative spinning over there, but strangely this activity has EXPLODED ever since a publishing deal leaked out concerning Darkfall. Are some of the trolls linked to other mmorpg developers perhaps? Or are they just seriously obsessed PvP haters?

It's also a good central place to keep an eye on several games at once. Fallen Earth, Age of Conan, Warhammer Online etc – dozens and dozens of mmorpg's each have their own sections and forums there. Reading about player experiences and opinions is what kept me (and is still keeping me) from buying Age of Conan for instance, which seems to have done a 'Vanguard' if the xfire figures are worth anything. Usually games experience a bell curve in player hours online after release. The game initially grows over several months to a year (or so), plateaus, and then slowly drops away as the game ages. Age of Conan's xfire figures have dropped by two thirds in the first month alone – which is very Vanguard-like.

Personally I think Funcom screwed up their strategy completely. Everyone hates grinding so Funcom says "let's make levelling easy!" The result is that people have levelled up multiple characters to level 80 and experienced most of the content (that was finished at release) in the first month.

They should have seen that people hate grinding TO level and that the problem was rather the levelling system.

I could probably write a whole blog post on that alone, but I won't.

Anyway.

Whistelstopper I've given up on, though I still lurk sometimes. It's another political forum, like Coles, but more active and more middle-ground politically. I used to post a great deal there, and used to donate, for many years but there have been a few 'odd' things happening over there that just left a bad taste in my mouth. You're debating with someone who happens to be a moderator and you make some excellent points or arguments, only to see your posts conveniently 'disappear'. Or some arse-hat of a moderator hits you with infractions because they were in a bad mood at the time. It's worth looking at but it's pretty much run by older-generation types who frown if you spill your tea, metaphorically speaking.

Then there is Forumfall, or to give it its' proper pronunciation – FORUMFALL! With "This is" often used as a prefix. The best forum for lurkers IMO, simply because it's so damn entertaining. Very active. Lots of on-topic and off-topic discussion. Intelligent and witty posters. And minimal trolling thanks to the staff there. The rules there may seem relaxed compared to other forums (mmorpg.turd excluded) but that's just because being polite isn't on the Terms of Service, which is enforced ... with big sticks.

In fact, I haven't checked Forumfall for at least an hour now and I've already got cravings. Damn it Forumfall, stop being so much fun.

There are other forums I could talk about ... but I need my fix.

Getting album art and working videos onto your Sony NWZ-A815 / A816 / A818 Walkman.

I recently bought a Sony A818 walkman but was kinda disappointed that it didn't come with simple tools for adding album art to the imported music or for converting videos to the format that the player will play. Not being a techno-geek it took me a while to work out how to do it.

Well, it's actually really easy to do, so to save other non-geek types like myself from spending countless hours fruitlessly searching Google for a solution I'd thought I'd write a simple non-geek "How-To" guide about it. Once you've understood it you'll be using your walkman like a portable TV (like me) and all your albums will have album art attached.

Firstly - Album Art

You've probably already tried to "sync" your walkman to your PC already, thinking that it would be an easy way to get your music on your player, only to realise in horror that Windows, in order to be "helpful", then turns your USB connector cable into a sphincter through which it then curls off a great big turd that contains ALL your pictures, videos, music and sound effects from ALL your folders (even the naughty pictures you thought you cleverly hid in a folder titled "advanced thermodynamics in quantum liquids") and dumps them into your poor hapless walkman while you're screaming helplessly "STOP! STOP!! OMFG STOP!!!"

This leaves dragging and dropping, which is dead easy but doesn't give you the album art. What you need to do is 'tag' your music tracks with the album art before you drag them into your walkman.

This is what you do ...

1 – Download Mp3tag (get it here) and install it.

2 – Search Google Image Search for your album art. It's dead easy since thumbnail images are used widely by online music stores, but keep in mind that anything over 300x300 in size sometimes won't show up on your player (because it's too big). Right click your chosen image and "save as".

3 – Use Windows Media Player to rip your album to your computer. It will stick the ripped album into your "Music" folder (in Vista at least – other versions of Windows probably do something similar). Obviously you don't need to do this if your music is already on your PC.

4 – Start up Mp3tag. Click the icon that looks like a folder with a green tick on it (marked "1" in the pic) and navigate to your album FOLDER. It's the folder that you want to select and not any of the tracks that are in it.

(click to enlarge)

5 – Once you've opened the folder all your tracks should be displayed. Select a track by clicking it then hit Ctrl-A to select all the tracks at once (you have to tag all the tracks you see).

6 – Right click the box on the lower left (marked "2" in the pic), select "add cover" and navigate to your previously saved album cover art.

7 – Click the save icon (marked "3" in the pic) to save the cover art "tags" to your tracks. You can check that it has worked by selecting one of your tracks (in normal windows explorer and not in mp3tag). In Vista you will get a thumbnail of the album art in the lower left of the window along with file/track details.

8 – Connect your walkman to your PC and drag and drop your newly tagged albums into your player, then bask in the warm fuzzy glow that you get when your album menu looks like below! (I used a flash so it's kinda hard to see the screen, but you get the idea)

Secondly - Video

Sony are funny people. They create a walkman media player that can play video – and has battery life enough for 8 whole hours of playback – but do NOT give you software or tools to convert your videos to the ONE format/codec that the walkman CAN play, or even give you pointers as to WHICH software can do it or WHERE to get it!

That's not a problem if you're a geek but the majority of us punters are (at least) a little fuzzy as to what a codec actually is.

Never fear, with a few simple tools you virtually can turn your walkman in to a TV, allowing you to grab videos from YouTube for walkman viewing.

It's simple to do too.

1 – Getting the video.

If you have no intention of grabbing videos from YouTube or other similar sites and only want to stick your videos on your walkman then you can skip this section.

I'm assuming that you have Firefox as your web browser. People who still use Windows Internet Explorer are like people who still use vinyl LP's because they haven't "discovered" CD's yet.

Go to KeepVid and drag the indicated button to your firefox links toolbar.

Go to YouTube (or a similar site) and find a video that you'd like to watch on your walkman. There are millions of videos on YouTube so you'll have little problem finding music videos, tv shows, film clips, lolcat vids etc (use their search).

Click the Keep It! Button that you dragged onto your links toolbar. This will take you back to KeepVid but this time there will be download links for you. Click the ">>Download<< (.flv – Low Quality)" link and chose to "Save to Disk" option.

Now this is important – DON'T save the video with the default name (which will be "get_video"). Rename the video and stick ".flv" on the end so that it looks like "funny_cats.flv" or whatever. Click save.

The video you just downloaded is in Flash format which you can view with a flash player but needs to be converted before it will work on your walkman.

2 – Converting the video

Fortunately Sony's PSP also plays MPEG4 videos and there is a handy video conversion tool already out there that will also work for your walkman.

Download and install PSP Video 9.

Once you've done that start the program and click the "Convert" button followed by the "Current Conversion" tab (marked "1" in the pic), click "Convert Video" (marked "2" in the pic) and navigate to your downloaded video. Once you've selected your video you need to set the output format "profile" (marked "3" in the pic) to one of the MPEG4 320x240 versions.

If you're having problems converting a video (ie – if it's really slow or just failing to do it) try using a different firmware version (I usually use the Fw2.80 MPEG4 320x240 version) but the program is a little buggy so you may have to restart PSP Video 9 if that doesn't work.

Click the start button.

The converted video will be placed in your documents/converted videos/PSP/MPEG4 folder and will have an associated thumbnail picture with it. You can now drag and drop both the video and thumbnail into your walkman for your viewing pleasure. I have 40 video clips on my walkman myself.

I hope this helps people :)

I don't 'get' the vapourware trolls

Specifically over on the MMORPG.com forums. MMORPG.com have forums for every MMO game released and in development that you can think off. In the Darkfall forums there, 40-50% of the people who post are Darkfall fans. The other 50-60% of them are Age of Conan fans alleging that Darkfall is vapourware, or that it just doesn't exist at all.

That's the first thing that I don't 'get'. Out of all the MMO games out there that are in development, why have AoC fans latched onto Darkfall? You don't see fans from other MMO games 'vapourware trolling' in the Darkfall forums, and you don't see Darkfall fans trolling the AoC forums either.

The second thing that I don't get is what you might call their 'denial complex'. They allege that there is barely anything out there in the way of screen shots or videos to prove that the game actually exists, yet you point out the videos and screen shots and they come back with allegations that they are all either faked in various 3d applications, or created with photoshop.

I even read one troll claiming that a recent screen shot showing a spell effect was just done with a custom brush in photoshop.

What the fuck?

For the record there are something like seven videos and hundreds of screen shots that have been released by the developers.

Yet some of the trolls still claim that the developers only release two or three screen shots a year (they actually release around three screen shots with every bi-weekly developer journal, plus many more on the official Darkfall site), they claim that there is no evidence of the combat system working (despite numerous videos), that there is no evidence of the UI (despite many screen shots and videos), and that the existing video footage and in-game screen shots just show a heavily modded version of Oblivion.

One troll claimed that the Mirdain racial mount video was completely faked.

I think these guys need to loosen the tin-foil hats so that blood can reach their brains again.

But why are a lot of AoC fans like this?

I have a few ideas on this, and it pretty much boils down to tribalism. You see, most MMO games these days are hyped to the hilt during development. They always put out a CGI trailer very early in the development cycle, when there is no game to speak of, for instance. The developers heap hype on top of hype as the game is created, all of which is designed to pull people in, get a following and maximise publicity and initial sales.

The people that get pulled in and become fans invest substantial amounts of time in 'their' chosen game – whether it is by watching the various videos, examining the screen shots, posting on the forums, reading background info or following the developer updates.

With so much personal time invested in a game even before it is released, and with the risk of a game being a flop or failing to meet the hyped expectations, fans get tribalistic and can get either defensive about 'their' game (like long-time Vanguard fans in the first couple of months after Vanguard's disastrous release) or offensive against other games that are perceived as a threat to 'their' game.

If you examine Darkfall and Age of Conan, superficially they look very similar on their feature list. Delve deeper and Age of Conan starts to look like "Darkfall Lite™".

Of course both games are completely different and it's probably unfair to compare one to the other. Funcom, AoC's developer, doesn't even call their baby a MMORPG, preferring instead "online action RPG" (notice the lack of "Massive" and "Multiplayer" being mentioned in there). Initially, before the fans criticised it, AoC was supposed to be played as a single player game for the first twenty levels.

Having said that people do compare the two games. Both have city sieges and clans fighting over control for territory for instance. However, while that is a fundamental core feature in Darkfall, it is more like instanced end-game content in AoC.

Superficially similar, fundamentally different.

This is probably why many committed AoC fans are so hostile to Darkfall. If Darkfall releases with 80-90% of what was promised then it could really impact AoC's subscriber base and the success of the game. People who want real combat, clan cities, sieges and huge battles over territory are going to opt for the superior versions of those features that Darkfall offers rather than the 'tacked on' or 'virtual' versions in AoC.

Even Age of Conan developers seem to have this worry in the back of their minds.

Enter Athelan, an Age of Conan developer. He mocked Darkfall's feature list (as well as Aventurine) on the AoC forums, but had to defend himself after a poster pointed out that Athelan's boss had made some pretty wild claims about AoC himself.

This was his reply –

"Well there is a big difference between making some promises and not being able to deliver everything, and literally promising everything :P

It's like saying I promise to buy you a new car by the end of the year. At the end of the year I didn't buy you a brand new BMW I ended up buying a Honda.

But if I promised to buy you a Ferrari, and said no not just a Ferrari but a Ferrari Enzo, with custom solid gold rims, and full leather interior custom made out of lambskin. Then delivered you a used 1983 Mazda, or a toy car looking like a Ferrari ;p."

So there you have it from the very lips of a FunCom developer - Age of Conan is the Honda of the MMORPG world, while Darkfall is the "Ferrari Enzo, with custom solid gold rims, and full leather interior custom made out of lambskin" of the MMORPG world.

This is why so many AoC fans troll the MMORPG.com Darkfall forums. They fear that Darkfall will offer vastly superior game-play to AoC and thus harm the success of 'their' low-fantasy theme park game.

If Darkfall delivers on its feature list that is to say, and no-one can say whether or not it will deliver until release. Not even the trolls.

Dimfall 009 is now out!

And I've posted it over on the official Dimfall blog.

Click the thumb to see.

Dimfall 008 is now out!

You can see it over on the new official Dimfall blog. Go on ... off you go :)

Dimfall has a new home!

With issue 008 of Dimfall being almost complete I'd thought I'd warn people that it, and all future issues, will not be posted here. I've set up a separate blog for all things Dimfall here




Update your bookmarks and expect Dimfall 008 during next week some time.

While you're waiting for Dimfall 008 ...

Check out this funny EQ2 film (the punchline is right at the end)

:)

Dimfall - Issue 007 "MMORPG Economics 101"

Click to expand

Dimfall - Issue 006 "It's not one of us!"

Click to expand.

When a PK'er meets a hardcore carebear you just know that one of them will react like the final scene in "Invasion of the Body Snatchers"

"IT'S NOT ONE OF US! KILL IT! KILL IT!! KILL IT!!!!"

lol

Incoming Comic!

I've got just one frame left to do for Dimfall 006 (plus the text) and I'll have finished another strip (yay!)

Going to bed now (I sleep days and work nights) but when I get back up I'll crank out the last frame and hopefully get it posted by Friday morning ... maybe.

I must say that doing this comic is the best idea I've had for ages. It's a lot of effing fun.

If I keep doing this I'll set up a separate blog or something dedicated to Dimfall. THIS blog usually gets 20 visits a week, not the 600 a day that I've been getting because of Dimfall. I'm pretty sure no-one wants to plough though my random ramblings just to find the posts that contain Dimfall issues.

:)

Dimfall - Issue 005

Click to expand :)