Posted by Wilhelm Arcturus in General, World of Warcraft.
Tags: King Ping, WoW Achievements
I ran down to Kamagua last night to do the daily quest there to start in on Vikund’s faction with the Kalu’ak, because I am serious when I say I want that Mastercrafted Kalu’ak fishing pole you can buy when you hit exalted with their faction.
I picked up the daily quest The Way To His Heart… which involves fish and aquatic mammalian love… and ran off to do the deed when I ran into a giant fjord penguin standing on the beach.
As I got close to him, I found out he was aggro as he started attacking me. I fought back and took him down, only to get an achievement pop.
All of it happened so fast that I did not get a screen shot of any of it, but here was the achievement.
It turned out that I had run into the legendary King Ping!
He looks pretty much like the fjord penguins in the screen shots from yesterday’s post. Perhaps he wasn’t taking my penguin bombing antics lying down.
And King Ping was nice enough to drop the Egg Warming Blanket of the Invoker and an abandoned adventurer’s satchel which yielded 20 pieces of frostweave cloth and nearly 25 gold.
Not a bad reward for such a chance encounter. I will have to see if the Egg Warming Blanket of the Invoker is an upgrade for any of the casters in our group Saturday night.
Posted by Wilhelm Arcturus in entertainment, Instance Group, World of Warcraft.
Tags: Fjord Penguins, Howling Fjord
We did not get back to Utgarde Keep last Saturday. Skronk and Ula could not make it, so Bung, Earl, and I rolled around Howling Fjord for a while doing some quests. Both Earl and I used alts as were are both starting to creep away from the rest of the group in experience.
The big surprise of the night was, after doing the quest The Cleansing at the top of a mountain, we failed to notice that completion of the quest gave us the spell Slow Fall, so we were quite surprised when, riding the steep paths back down the mountain, our mounts seemed to take flight.
Not A Flying Mount
I have to hand it to some evil genius at Blizzard who slipped that one in, because it fooled us!
We did not stay on too late, but Bung is closing in on 72.
Meanwhile, I have been working on some of the suggestions people gave on last week’s post.
I respec’d Vikund to retribution again, following the path outlined at Elitist Jerks in their forum on paladins.
This will be his third time going down the retribution path. I keep changing back to protection because I am, I guess, and old school paladin who, as Skronk puts it, “never dies, but neither do his enemies.” I am good at protection, I like it, I am used to it.
Retribution, on the other hand, will take me some work to get used to. I have to figure out a good cycle of attacks and how to manage my power, because it seems to drain away too quickly.
Following that up, I went out to the auction house and bought up some spiked cobalt armor, which is bit on hit rating and strength to help boost my damage.
Same Style, New Color
And then I got myself a big old spiked club with which to beat on things.
That was the biggest I could find. Not as cool as that board with a nail through it I had once, but it means business.
And, finally, I have been running a couple of daily quests on a regular basis to improve my standings in hopes that one of the quartermasters might have something nice for me when I get to revered.
My regular run is Break the Blockade, the one where you bomb pirate ships from a captured zeppelin. Not that I haven’t had my own issues with the quest.
Paladin in the Water!
I hate when I forget that my avatar is faced one direction and the camera another. And you cannot even bomb the pirates from the water. At least I got to say hello to the fjord penguins.
Howling Fjord Penguins
They didn’t seem to hold a grudge for all the times I tried to bomb them.
The other daily I run… daily… is Steel Gate Patrol which has the advantage of being fun and yielding up two super health potions on completion. I know you can only use one potion per fight, but when I am down to 2 or 3 in my bag, I tend to put off using them until it is too late.
I know others in the group are looking into honing their own DPS after last Friday’s post, so if we get together for Utgarde again this Saturday, we should do better.
Posted by Wilhelm Arcturus in entertainment, MUDs, TorilMUD.
Tags: Wikia, Wikipedia
The angst of the week seems to be about Wikipedia chopping articles about MUDs because they lack verifiable sources.
For good or bad, Wikipedia is the animal it is, and its rules can be enforced rather selectively. Somebody seems to have it in for MUD history and they have the rules to back them up. If it wasn’t lack of sources, it would be the “not notable” angle or something else. Go listen to Jason Scott or look up Wikilawyering (and all the “See Also” items listed on that page) to get a feel for what can go astray.
But to moan, “Oh no, we’re going to lose all that history because somebody at Wikipedia is being mean!” seems to be a bit of a cop-out.
If it is important not to lose this history, it is important enough to preserve by other means or in other places. So I have to agree with something I have seen suggested, which is that perhaps something on Wikia would be a better answer.
I don’t want to lose this history either. I’ve been on something of a MUD history jag over the last few months myself, relating times on TorilMUD.
Yes, not being on Wikipedia is a bummer. Entries won’t ever be top responses on Google. People who go to straight to Wikipedia and look up MUDs won’t find it. But one of the tenets of Wikipedia is to not be an original source of information.
Of course, this new MUD History Wiki could take the stance of being an original source…
hrmm…
are you thinking what I am?
I mean, I’ve seen Tobold cited as a source on Wikipedia…
But somebody needs to start up that MUD History Wiki first and announce it so that the people who do really care can help spread the word and help build it up.
Posted by Wilhelm Arcturus in entertainment, General.
Tags: Andy's BBQ, BBQ
Since Grimwell is handing out BBQ advice for San Diego, I thought I would add my own recommendation for here in Silicon Valley.
And that recommendation would be Andy’s BBQ, now on El Camino Real at San Tomas Expressway in Santa Clara.
Seriously good BBQ.
I have been eating there my whole life. But then, like me, it has been around since the valley was still more farmland than anything else.
One of the toughest times of self-control for me was when I worked up the street from them. The temptation to head over for another brisket lunch was huge… and I would have been too if I had done it very often.
The brisket platter, their spicy BBQ sauce, a baked potato with the works (okay, hold the cheese), and an order of mushrooms and I am a happy man.
Maybe we should have a blogger BBQ meme. Who wants to go next?
Posted by Wilhelm Arcturus in entertainment, Lord of the Rings Online.
Tags: Nimrodel, Podcasters of Bree
The call of Moria is clear. The route there is a different matter.
After getting back into Lord of the Rings Online with Gaff, where he had to reactivate three accounts while I got to play my lifetime “get into Middle-earth free” card, he got his revenge by mandating a server change.
While we had successfully retaken Weathertop on Windfola, we really did not have anybody else with whom to play on the server.
Sure, Gaff brings three accounts to the table, but that just means he is going to out run me in levels because he plays more.
So we decided to see if we could horn in on some of the action being had by a couple of our EQ2 guild mates (Darren and Michael) on the Nimrodel server.
So we are now Nimrods, right? I was told that was the term for people who play on the server.
Gaff jumped in, took off, and is already at level with the rest of the main characters in “Podcasters of Bree” kinship. (I got in because I have appeared on podcasts with most of the members of the kinship, while Gaff was covered under the “bring three accounts, get in free” clause in the kinship charter.)
I, on the other hand, was more than a bit dubious about starting over again from scratch.
Starting off in a game like this can be fun, a voyage of discovery and all that, but once you have gotten a few levels, a mount, some trade skills, and have figured out how your character works, throwing off all infrastructure, cash, and whatnot seems like a big jump.
Still, having friends with whom to play is a big draw, so back to square one I went.
On Windofola I had a guardian, a hunter, and a champion, all level 25 or above. This time I decided to go with a captain.
And so Tistann of Rohan was created. In probably a bad move, I attempted to make him look as much like me (clean shaven version) as I could, although there was no slider for “dark bags under eyes,” so he looks a little more fresh faced than I ever do.
Tistann and his Ally
Actually, Tistann’s standard bearer looks a bit more like me at the moment, as I have a full “winter beard” right now.
Things have not gone too badly with my restart.
Turbine toned down the difficulty of the starting area a bit. Some things that were aggro before are now neutral, making the first dozen quests more about learning how to do quests than learning how to kill a dozen spiders to get to a quest objective.
And once into the “real” world, I was able to do well enough. I still remember the basics about a lot of the early quests, but not all of the detail. So I usually know where to go (which is often the hardest part in these games) but I don’t always remember what is awaiting me, so the outcome of the quest is usually something of a surprise.
Turbine also appears to have softened the initial leveling curve a bit. At least it seems that way to me, but it is a totally subjective feeling. I just seem to be moving along at a faster rate than before.
I went from rolling up the character to level 8 in one evening. Then I let him sit for a week, came back and went to level 13 in another evening. And now I seem to be able to knock out a level in a sitting without too much strain, so he sits at level 17 today.
That still puts me a good ten levels behind the pack and the leveling curve is starting to get a little more steep, so I am going to have to work at it if I want to catch up. As long as I can avoid the inevitable alts for a while, I might make it.
But all in all, I am enjoying being back in LOTRO. Turbine has smoothed down a lot of the rough edges. And while the basic game is generic fantasy MMORPG (quests, experience, levels, skills, buttons, and such) it does have a very mellow feel to it and having a series of quests that are part of a larger narrative is still very cool. I was worried from day one about how they would handle that, but it is done very well.
And I must admit that I love that the cut scenes for the narrative are done in the game engine with models you see in game. While the quality isn’t outstanding because of the limitations of the engine, it does feel like you are seeing things happening elsewhere in the game, giving everything a more unified feel.
Still miles to go before Moria, but I am on my way.
Posted by Wilhelm Arcturus in Blizzard, Diablo II, Diablo III, entertainment, Other PC Games, World of Warcraft.
Tags: Counter-Strike, Halo, Nielsen Ratings, RuneScape, Team Fortress 2, The Sims
Last Friday Massively had a post up about the Nielsen ratings for PC video games for January through October of 2008. The post itself pointed to a Kotaku article that listed out the top ten games for that period with statistical rankings.
They were (sans details):
- World of Warcraft
- Call of Duty 4
- Halo: Combat Evolved
- The Sims
- The Sims 2
- RuneScape
- Diablo II
- Team Fortress 2
- Counter-Strike
- Counter-Strike Source
The point of the articles seemed to be to remind us that we play a lot of World of Warcraft. Massively did note that there was a massive title on the list besides WoW, namely RuneScape, but otherwise the list seemed to reinforce what we all suspected. As one commentor put it:
How every you not need to read this crap to known that World of Warcraft was the most played game of 2008! base on the sale numbers alone!
You tell ‘em!
But for me, the amazing/amusing part of the list was Diablo II.
Eight years after release, and seven years after the last expansion, it makes it to the list.
Yes, Diablo II got a nostalgia boost this year when Blizzard finally got around to announcing Diablo III, but that alone does not account for the popularity of the title. After all, if you go look at the X-Fire statistics every month, you will see Diablo II listed under “Top 10 Other.”
But then, a good chunk of this list is older games. The Sims, Counter-Strike, and Halo are all PC titles over five years old. Even The Sims 2 is four years old, making it as old as… well… World of Warcraft or the current version of RuneScape.
When it comes down to it, only Call of Duty 4 and Team Fortress 2 are really “new” games, and even they are based off older titles.
What does it mean?
Do new games just suck? Is Nielsen fundamentally flawed? Is PC gaming not dead, but just not done with the stuff it already has?
Posted by Wilhelm Arcturus in World of Warcraft, entertainment, Instance Group.
Tags: Northrend, Utgarde Keep, Howling Fjord
The Saturday night after Christmas found us arrayed again before the doors of Utgarde Keep for another fun run. Our lineup was:
71 Warlock – Bungholio
71 Priest – Skronk
71 Mage – Ula
71 Paladin – Vikund
72 Warrior – Earlthecat
Only Earl had played much over the intervening two weeks, so you might ask why we thought we would do better than previous attempts if not much had changed. Laziness? Lack of initiative? Determination to press on? Insanity?
You can speculate, but we’re not telling.
We decided to skip anything that we could get past. That meant that we only killed two of the three groups working the forge and only three of the enslaved proto-drake groups while sneaking past all the rest.
That brought us to Prince Keleseth again.
We killed his four minions and then debated as to whether we could just bypass him or not.
Watching his pacing back and forth, we thought it might be possible, but decided to take him down just to be safe.
We wiped on the first fight due to bad positioning. We positioned ourselves off to the left, then were talking about the fight when Prince K walked into aggro range and started attacking us. We nearly pulled it off all the same, but didn’t quite make it.
The second fight, started from a little further back, went much more smoothly and the Prince K went down.
Since last time I had installed the addon “recount” that was suggested by some people as a damage parser. I reset it before the second Prince K fight, just to see how much a pally with a shield was holding back the group. The results:
A pally with a shield still does pretty well DPS-wise when it comes to undead I’d say, but I’m afraid to ask what this damage output says about our group overall.
We moved on, plowing through to Skarvald the Constructor and Dalronn the CFO/Controller.
Discussing Year End Results
This fight took us a few tries. We seemed to be coming close each time, bringing down Dalronn but not lasting through Skarvald. His charges during the fight were causing too much damage, even when Earl was tanking Skarvald and Vikund was tanking Dalronn and most of the charges were hitting Vik.
Skarvald Charges, But Pays Off His Balance Every Month
Eventually we went to the web and read that Skarvald has a minimum range on his charges and that if everybody just sticks close, he does not charge.
With that bit of information on our side, we handily won the next fight. Piece of cake.
Skalvard and Dalronn Down
And suddenly we were in new territory.
We fought our way up some more stairs and out into the open, the final battle taking place on the roof of the keep.
Fighting Atop The Keep
You can look out and see all of Howling Fjord around the keep. Or at least the instanced version of it. We fought our way onward.
Spiritualist Is A Female Dominated Profession Among The Vrykul
Until, at last, we faced the final boss. Ingvar the Plunderer stood before us.
Ingvar Awaits
His head would finish the last quest and end the instance for us. We just had to kill him… twice.
You see, you kill Ingvar, which isn’t so tough, and then he comes back from the dead and you have to kill him again, which is a bit tougher.
We had a soul stone handy, so we knew we had at least two tries in us. We nearly did it. Both times in the second fight, one of us did not get out of the way of Ingvar’s dark smash in time, an attack that is a one shot kill if you are at all down on hit points.
After our two fights we had to release and start the run back through the instance. However, as happened last week, we ran into respawns.
Couldn't You Have Taken The Night Off?
The hour was late and we did not want to fight our way back to Ingvar again, so we called off further efforts; so close to our goal, but not quite there.
We took a portal Ironforge where we played with the Crashin’ Thrashin’ Racers we all got for the Feast of Winter Veil. Vikund even got the associated with the racer for crashing into other racers 25 times.
We’ll be back for Ingvar soon.
Posted by Wilhelm Arcturus in Blizzard, Diablo III, entertainment, EverQuest, EverQuest II, Humor, lego, Lord of the Rings Online, Sony Online Entertainment, Star Wars: The Old Republic, Warhammer Online, World of Warcraft.
Tags: 38 Studios, Carbine Studios, Champions Online, darkfall, Red5 Studios, Richard Bartle, Richard Garriott, Station Cash, Tobold
The New Year is upon us again, a time when we frequently assess the past 12 months ended up handing us and examine what the next 12 might bring.
Last year I had no plans to make any predictions until I read some of the vague, wimpy, or tepid guesses at the future that some of my fellow bloggers had posted. They seemed to want to be right versus being interesting. For me, being right is perhaps a third tier goal. I would much rather stimulate some thought or discussion on what might come. But I am a fan of Robert Cringely, so what can you expect. To do that you have to go outside of the easy answer and be wrong. And if I can make a joke or two along the way, so much the better.
So I made my 2008 Progdictionations. I scored myself at 22% at the end of the year, which was higher than I expected.
This year, the blogging community has some more interesting predictions up (and here, and here, and here, and here), but I am caught up in the predictions thing now, so I have to display my ignorance again this year.
Of course, sometimes the hardest thing is pushing the envelope and coming up with a prediction that is outrageous. I got to the end of some of my guesses below and they did not sound so far fetched. That still doesn’t mean any of them will be right.
So let’s see how far off-base I can get.
1 – Private Citizen British
Fresh from his out of world experiences, plus that trip to the space station, Richard Garriott will start a new studio, (Mid-Point Games, somewhere between Origin and Destination), and begin talking up some “New Ideas” ala Gary Hart.
He will point to what he learned making Tabula Rasa and inspiration that he gained in the zero gravity of space, looking down on the Earth from on high, though it will later be discovered that his oxygen mix was a little off during his last few hours in space.
He will then wave his arms a lot in an attempt to articulate his vision. He will actually use the word “vision.”
That will be his undoing.
He will make no real progress selling his ideas in 2009 and will have to settle for being merely successful, rich, famous, and smart this year.
Of course, I thought this was going to be outrageous and amusing when I wrote it a couple weeks back, but then I read yesterday that Garriott is already throwing his hat into the ring. My prediction stands however.
2 – Bartle’s Test
Dr. Richard Bartle will stun the massive gaming community by making controversial statements about a popular MMO and will actually mean what he says. He will not give follow up interviews with Massively to clarify his position nor post comments to blog sites to correct misinterpretations of his statement.
This will confuse the community greatly. Massively, Joystiq, and other sites will run their own articles explaining what Dr. Bartel really meant while Dr. Bartle himself will eventually resort to posting to his own blog and various forums imploring people to take what he said at face value, as quoted, and to please stop trying to soften his message.
3 – Age of Anarchy
Funcom, bedeviled by problems with the Age of Conan release and still dragging along Anarchy Online will decided that costs can be reduced by taking the next logical step in server merges: Game merges. Age of Conan and Anarchy Online will be folded into a single game. Depending on which client you log into the game with, you will either be playing in a gritty universe of the future or in a vision of Robert E. Howard’s Conan world.
Age of Conan players will benefit from a sudden influx of stable if somewhat non-canon content while Anarchy Online players will get more cleavage options and DX-10 support.
This will give FunCom some financial breathing room and allow CEO Trond Arne Aas to speak with confidence about their next massive title, The Secret World. Mr. Aas will say that FunCom really learned a lot from their first two MMO releases and won’t make those mistakes again. He will then remind people that his last name is spelled with two a’s and one s and not the other way around.
4 – EverQuesting
The 10 Year Anniversary of EverQuest will be a big deal in 2009, with another Living Legacy-like promotion and special events, so be sure to cancel your account early in 2009 so you can play for free.
The 2009 EverQuest expansion, Realms of Valor, will have a huge boost in the level cap, taking it all the way to 100, and will include a series of planned raid progressions (because you know they won’t all make the ship date) that will be hailed as the best ever in game all based around a huge new overland zone.
There will also be off-line player sales along the lines of the broker in EQ2, an improvement in the minion system so that a guild can fill a whole party with minions to round out a raid (it will be awkward for guild leaders, but will work well), and at least one method of advancing your character while off-line. Not experience, nor AAs, but maybe skills or some other new character attribute. It will be very slow, but will only work while you are subscribed, showing that SOE is trying to tap some of that EVE Online training magic to keep subscriptions going.
Finally, this will be the last EverQuest expansion to appear in a box on store shelves.
5 – Call Your Agency
Sony Online Entertainment will continue to talk about The Agency, FreeRealms, and DC Universe Online in 2009. We will hear cool things and see exciting trailers, but no actual games will come our way.
Maybe, just maybe, we will see The Agency in November/December of 2009, but everything else is further out in the future, especially the new Norrath-based title they will announce.
By the end of the year, the reason for these delays will leak out. It will turn out that SOE’s new masters at Sony Computer Entertainment are insisting that all SOE game launches include a PS3 version on day one. They can launch PS3 and do PC later, but PS3 must never be a delayed release. This will hold up all new game launches while SOE works to align its skills and tools.
6 – Elves of the Burning Sea
Flying Lab Software, in an attempt to revive the subscriptions of its flagship product, will introduce a new server type that will replace the nations currently represented in Pirates of the Burning Sea with fantasy creatures.
The factions will be elves, humans and halflings, dwarves and gnomes, and goblins, orcs, and trolls filling out, respectively, the old French, Spanish, English, and Pirate factions. Cannons will be replaced on ships with ballistas and catapults (except on the dwarf/gnome faction, who will get gun powder), the artwork will be update over all, and a “new” new hand to hand combat system will be introduced to accommodate the anticipated on-deck melees.
The freedom of the new environment will allow Flying Labs to tune the game more for fun than reality. The server will end up being their most popular and they will have to do a server split to keep up. This will all lead to another round of blog posts on why fantasy seems to rule the genre.
7 – LEGO Dalaran
The team that did my favorite LEGO project of 2008, LEGO Booty Bay, will get back together in 2009 and do a magnificent LEGO rendition of Howling Fjord by mid-year, but will top this effort with a intricate model of Dalaran done in LEGO bricks. WoW Insider will be on the ground for step by step coverage of the construction that will inspire more LEGO-Azeroth construction projects.
This may or may not inspire a LEGO Azeroth video game.
8 – Station Cash Balance of Payments
A prediction that I made on Shut Up We’re Talking #40. Any current SOE game that does not get Station Cash is at its end development-wise. SOE is not going to turn off any game that is making money, but expect resources to be drawn off to new projects. Then will begin the slow decline into oblivion. As economic conditions tighten the purse strings, expect the end of PlanetSide to be announced at about the same time The Agency is expected to launch in a thinly veiled “here’s your new shooter” marketing plan.
9 – Star Wars Galaxies to Take A Bio
We will find out in 2009 is that LucasArts is only willing to sanction a single Star Wars based MMO running at any given time. SOE has known this all along and this is part of why they did not bother going to LucasArts with their Station Cash idea.
Seeing that BioWare is set to launch a Star Wars: The Old Republic… well… some day… the sense that time is running out will grip Star Wars Galaxies. There will be a resurgence of subscriptions as a wave of nostalgia washes over the old hands while along with an equal surge of tourist who want to see the game before it goes away.
This enthusiasm will not last as long as SWG remains on the scene, thanks to BioWare’s creeping pace, and Galaxies will go quietly into the night a few months before SWTOR launches.
10 – Dawn of Darkfall
Dakrfall will ship, though what is available on day one will be a subset of the over-ambitious feature list they have promised. It will even enjoy some modest success, enough to keep Aventurine going through 2009, while suffering the usual round of “just launched” MMO issues and patches.
It will not be the second coming of Ultima Online nor EVE Online in plate armor however, and Aventurine will have 2009 to figure out how to fix the problem that plagues cut-throat PvP; that a ready supply of victims tends to dry up once the hard core players settle in and take over.
Aventurine will walk a tightrope between keeping subscriptions up and pleasing their hard core followers who will cry out at any dilution of the unforgiving nature of the game. Failure to find the sweet spot will mean closure of the game by the end of 2010.
11 – Hero’s Slumber
Darkfall shipping will make Hero’s Journey the vaporware champ of the MMORPG genre. It will not ship in 2009. I consider this a “gimme” prediction so I will at least get one thing right when I do my accounting at the end of the year.
The fact that Simutronics cannot ship an MMORPG on its own development engine will continue to be the source of much snarkiness.
12 – Blizzard is Smarter Than You
And me too.
There will be lots of tuning of World of Warcraft along with some small content additions, but nobody is expecting an expansion this year, are they? Blizzard has proven that they can take their time and succeed beyond the wildest dreams of their competitors. This will continue to be an eye-opener at SOE who insisted on EverQuest expansions every six months for so long.
Diablo III and StarCraft II news will come out and there will be lots of whining and complaints. StarCraft II, when it ships this year, will top the charts and be embraced fully in South Korea.
Information about Blizzard’s new MMO will be released in 2009. It will lead to a blog firestorm of “Blizzard is run by idiots” style posts, all based on the faulty premise that Blizzard needs to develop another MMO in the mold of every other MMO or that the hard core edge that bloggers represent are the ideal target market.
Overall, Blizzard will continue to succeed despite not doing what a small number of vastly less successful pundits tell it to do.
13 – The New Guys
Red 5 Studios, Carbine Studios, and 38 Studios will all provide a lot more detail on their MMORPG projects this year, but it is going to be a tough climb for all three of them as they will need to prove that what they are creating will move the genre forward in a significant way to be taken seriously, as the fantasy MMORPG market is saturated by games that seem a lot like WoW (whether they came first or not) and WoW.
Maybe, just maybe, one of them will break the mold and go beyond WoW in a significant way, but my gut says no. Nothing we will see from them in 2009 will set a fire in the MMORPG market.
38 Studios has a lot of talent well versed in fantasy and how to make a current MMO. That path seems, in my mind, to lead refinement of the way things are, but not a change of the genre.
And then there is Carbine, founded by some guys from Blizzard, and Red 5, founded by some guys from Blizzard. Would I believe that a company founded by some guys from Apple would be able to beat the iPod or the iPhone based on their resume? I’ve already see that start-up. The answer is no.
Innovation will come from elsewhere in my opinion. (Maybe MetaPlace will become a talent incubator for the next generation?) We might see three successful, Lord of the Rings Online to Warhammer Online sized games from these studios, and they could be a lot of fun, but they won’t be different enough to spark enthusiasm.
14 – Heroes and Champions
President of NCSoft West, David Reid, will mention in an interview that City of Heroes is doing well and is here to stay. The resulting panic and exodus from the game will cause NCSoft to announce just three months later that City of Heroes will be closing by the end of 2009.
This will turn out to be perfect timing for Champions Online, which will be delayed until the Fall of 2009, to scoop up the remaining City of Heroes players to what many consider to be City of Heroes II in any case.
Later David Reid will mention that his marriage is fine, causing his wife to leave him, and that his position with NCSoft is secure, leading to his termination by the end of year. When asked about his health, he will wisely have no comment.
15 – Tobolderized
A Cult of Tobold will surface in 2009 with the publication on Wikia of Toboldipedia. This “Wiki of Love” will have the goal of categorizing, summarizing, and linking to all of the posts on Tobolds blog.
By mid year, however, there will a philosophical split between inclusionists, who seek to cover ALL of Tobold’s work, and exclusionists who seek to expunge Tobold works that they consider “non-canon” and which reflect, in their opinion, badly on Tobold.
By the end of the year there will be a ToboldWiki competing with Toboldipedia, and full scale war will erupt between the two sites when one publishes a picture they claim is of the actual Tobold. The other side will declare it a forgery (it will turn out to be SOE’s Brenlo wearing Groucho Glasses) while a third faction will arise at this point and declare that pictures of the anointed one are heresy and will work to destroy the other two factions and their sites.
A bemused and somewhat disturbed Tobold will find that he has no influence at all over any of these groups and, after a futile attempt to get them to “stop all this nonsense,” he will just ignore the whole thing and go back to his daily writings.
Looking Forward to 2009
With all that in store for us, 2009 should be an interesting year. Did I miss something? Am I even more off-base than I think I am? And to which Toblold camp do you belong? Let me know.
