Further Mutterings about MMO Revenue Models May 15, 2013
Posted by Wilhelm Arcturus in entertainment, EverQuest II, Lord of the Rings Online, Need for Speed World, Rift, Star Wars: The Old Republic, World of Tanks, World of Warcraft.Tags: Free-To-Play, MMO Subscriptions, No Real Point
20 comments
A few years back, at the height of the housing boom, we decided to move. We listed our house at the market price for our neighborhood, and the first day on the market we got an offer for roughly 60% of what we were asking. Somebody sensed, as we all were beginning to at that point, that the bubble was going to burst soon, and wanted to know if we were desperate.
We were not, and actually sold the house for what we were asking a couple weeks later. But there was no possibility that we were going to come to an arrangement with the person who made that first offer. Their offer was so insultingly low that it made it completely unlikely to be able to negotiate any deal at all.
—
We have a garage sale at least once a year. Often we have two, one in the spring and one in the fall. Just the process of finding stuff to sell helps us keep the house clear of clutter, so that our home, with the exception of my office and my daughter’s room, feels clean, open, and spacious.
We tend to put out all manner of things on the driveway for sale. I often have a pile of books that have made it into the category of “won’t read again” out on a table. At one garage sale I had done a big purge and had 40+ paperbacks lined up, with the asking price was 25 cents each. Cheap enough that anybody with an interest would pick them up, and it wouldn’t kill me if I decided to give a couple away to any kid who looked like they wanted to read one. And, as always, quantity discounts are available.
A woman, who rolled up in an expensive car, offered me a dollar for all of the books, and then started gathering them up like it was a done deal. A dollar turned out to be exactly the right price to start a fight.
In the cold logic of hindsight, it was just an offer I could freely reject.
In the reality and emotion of the moment, it was insulting. I started with “no” and worked my way up to using them for kindling before I would sell her one at full cover price. Her offer stayed at a dollar throughout, leavened with sneers and insults. But we could have stopped after our first pass through offer and rejection, as no deal was possible after that point. I cannot imagine she thought her negotiation technique was going to be effective. It is always interesting to meet people who are worse at interpersonal relationships than I am.
—
What did those two little stories have to do with anything? We’ll get to that. First, a foundation of words needs to be built.
With the announcement that Rift is moving from the once traditional monthly subscription model to a cash shop driven free to play model, there have been the usual range of reactions, from feelings that no good will come of this to expressions of joy at the demise of yet another monthly subscription barrier to entry. Some people really hate the subscription idea.
My own response is somewhere in between.
Good things will come of this change. I know that.
More people will play Rift. It won’t make it suddenly popular with people who wouldn’t play a fantasy MMORPG in the first place. But people who wouldn’t otherwise commit to $15 a month will want to play.
An annoying amount of words, and some irrelevant pictures, after the cut:
Half Price Garage Slots Just Enable My Problem May 1, 2013
Posted by Wilhelm Arcturus in entertainment, World of Tanks.Tags: Dragon Ridge, M37, M7 Priest, Pearl River
10 comments
I was pretty much set. I was working up a few different branches on various national trees. I was rotating through the ARL-44, the Jagpanther, and the KV-4, slowly accumulating the experience necessary to advance to the next tier on each.
All three of those tanks are now fully upgraded. It is just a matter of playing my way forward until I hit the next tier. I just have to focus.
Wait.
What is that?
Garage slots are half price?
I had better buy a few of those, just to have them. I will need them eventually, right?
Then, of course, after my requisite daily first wins, I start poking through the tech trees, just to look. And eventually I am driving around in this.
M37 on the field
The M37 self-propelled gun.
How did I get there? More after the break.
April in Review April 30, 2013
Posted by Wilhelm Arcturus in entertainment, EVE Online, Month in Review, Need for Speed World, Rift, World of Tanks.Tags: Meaningless Milestones
7 comments
The Site
A Google moment turned April into a record setting month for the blog pretty much out of the gate. My quick coverage of April Fools at Blizzard for this year managed to get on the first page of results for a number of salient searches and… well… sent a lot of traffic this way.
Page Views Gone Wild
The previous record was actually set last April, though that was driven by links to my Burn Jita posts. This year, Burn Jita wasn’t a hot topic and page views were about at the average-ish line across the event.
If you look at the gap between the dark bar, which is unique visits, and the light bar, which is total page views, it seems like people actually stopped to look at the links I had in the post, which included the past few years of April Fools. The “Most Viewed Posts” section below bears this out.
Upon seeing the sudden spike in traffic, I tried to incorporate as many links out to other blogs as I could in order to “share the wealth” such that is was. So a few other blogs got some traffic out of this.
April 1st and 2nd were about equal the whole month of February, which was when the impact of the Google image search changes showed up.
The downside of such a moment of Google fame is that the traffic is not very… sticky. I would be happy if out of all those people, one or two returned and left a comment now and again. And, of course, those two days will now skew the default graph on the stats page for a full month. Plus I keep looking at those two bars and feel like I should be reminded of some historical moment.
Never Forget… something…
As with the big dip in page views in February, the big spike this month is essentially meaningless in the big picture. I like to try and figure out why these things happen, and they make the part of me that enjoys statistics thrill. But it isn’t like I get paid for page views.
And, of course, I bet Google is going to kill off some more page views come July when they kill off Google Reader.
I haven’t switched to a replacement yet. I am waiting for the other providers to accommodate the surge before I move.
One Year Ago
Last April set a daily page view record. What is it about April? I know you are going to say “April Fools,” but the record was actually set because of the Burn Jita event.
Yeah, the Burn Jita event. It made for my most popular YouTube video ever. And it lead right into Hulkageddon V and its OTEC connection.
Elsewhere in EVE, the LEGO Rifter got 10K votes, the War in the North seemed to be winding down with RAZOR back in Tenal and six fleets stalking Venal. Raiden managed to lose a bunch of sovereignty, by accident, which finished that up. All that was left was to say we didn’t want that region anyways. We also made conga lines, experience time dilation, and followed DBRB through high sec to kill some super caps. And Seleene became the chairman of the Galactic Student Council.
I was also syndicated occasionally on EVE News 24. I don’t think I got paid for all of that.
I also made a list of small features I wanted other MMOs to copy.
Lord of the Rings Online hit the five year mark.
Potshot and I were wandering around EverQuest again, looking for lost dungeons. We were not buying any $25 bags though.
In Rift, the instance group was driven out of King’s Breach. But Trion added in fishing, so we could do that instead.
And it was April Fools at Blizzard.
Five Years Ago
I made up something for April Fool’s Day. I thought it was amusing.
Lord of the Rings Online celebrated a year of being live. Book 13 introduced, among other things, fishing. And my video problems with the game proved to be a bad video card, so I was actually able to get into the game.
Computer Gaming World/Games For Windows magazine ceased publishing as part of the ongoing demise of print media.
In EVE Online I made the big move from Caldari to Amarr space. I also began producing Badger transports for fun and profit. CCP introduced the whole Council of Stellar Management thing, which I dubbed The Galactic Student Council. My opinion on it hasn’t changed much since.
Meanwhile in WoW one million people in China logged into WoW at the same time. There is still no report on what would happen if they all pressed the space bar at the same time. While that was going on, the instance group finished up the Slave Pens and the Underbog and began the long struggle with the Mana Tombs.
I was looking around for Tetris on the Nintendo DS. You would think that would be easy, right?
And then it was Tipa’s turn to bang the EverQuest nostalgia drum, so I joined in yet again.
New Linking Sites
The following blogs have linked this site in their blogroll, for which they have my thanks.
Please take a moment to visit them in return.
Most Viewed Posts in April
Per the top of the post, April Fools at Blizzard dominates the list this month.
- April Fools at Blizzard – 2013
- April Fools at Blizzard – 2012
- Blizzard Blindsided by Diablo III Auction House Popularity
- Running Civilization II on Windows 7 64-bit
- April Fools at Blizzard – 2011
- WoW Dance Battle System!
- Ignore Burn Jita? Is That Your Plan?
- April Fools at Blizzard – 2010
- Burn Jita Held Over for an Extended Run
- Age of Empires II – HD Edition, That’s What I’m Talking About
- What is it with Me and Storm Legion?
- Camelot Unchained Kickstarter Unleashed!
Search Terms of the Month
animal jam: non fair membership abilities
[Welcome to free to play]
trion merge with blizzard
[Heh, copy Blizz, yes, merge with Blizz...]
brothers in arms or camo for arty?
[Camo]
world of warcraft bdr g1b good 4 money
[A BDR G1B would rule in WoW... in WoT, not so much]
Spam Comment of the Month
Do you have a spam issue on this website; I also am a blogger, and I was wanting to know your situation;
[From a spam comment linking to "genuine" Prada items]
EVE Online
A quiet month in New Eden for me. Burn Jita was an exercise in precise, clinical destruction. The fleet ops I went on all ended up with no action for me. I made some money speculating on ice products. A rumor went around before FanFest about ice changes, so I bought up half a billion ISK worth in Amarr and relisted it for double what I paid. That sat until the announcement at FanFest, and which point it sold. Easy money. And then the price dropped back down.
Oh, yeah, and CSM8 elections. Congratulations to the winners, which includes Jester, who will now have to suffer the fate of getting exactly what he asked for.
Need for Speed World
I have actually played this game every single day this year. I log on, I do the gem hunt, I log off. Elapsed time for each session is generally under 10 minutes. It was part of my plan to see what sort of rewards you would get for the daily hunt as time went along. I thought I would be done at that point. But then they added achievements. And for just another hundred or so gem hunts in a row, you get a special car. So I am in for the long haul on that.
Rift
After sulking about Storm Legion for quite a while, I actually pressed on into it with a recommended solo build for my warrior. It is okay. Will I press on and finish though? Meanwhile, the instance group… has failed to show up consistently since the beginning of the year. So we still have yet to finish the first Storm Legion instance, Exodus of the Storm Queen.
World of Tanks
I continue working with my KV-4. Tier 8 in a heavy has turned out to be pretty fun. I do dread those matches with three or four SPGs on a side though. You cannot hide under cover forever, and getting caught in the open is murder.
Coming Up
We will know how the Camelot Unchained Kickstarter saga ends in a couple days. Success will mean City State Entertainment getting to work. Failure will mean… well, we shall see what it means.
I have a blog anniversary coming up… for another blog. But I am going to write about it here because nobody reads that blog. Though, to be fair, it is all about pictures instead of words.
Neverwinter is going to show up. I think it is open beta or pre-release or taking money from the general public as of today even. I have been averting my gaze from it so as not to spoil anything in advance. The call of Forgotten Realms will probably ensure that I will download that at some point, but I won’t be in for the day one rush.
Maybe… just maybe… the instance group will do Exodus of the Storm Queen this month.
Weighty Matters and the KV-4 April 23, 2013
Posted by Wilhelm Arcturus in entertainment, World of Tanks.Tags: KV-4
5 comments
I did not spend too much time tanking this past weekend, and when I did, I was focused on the KV-4. Thanks to it being a double crew experience weekend I managed to get all of the crew, save that one lagging loader, into their second skill/perk.
On the advice of many, I went with Sixth Sense for his first perk. I have found that perk useful when running tank destroyers and scouts, but I remain a bit dubious about how useful it will be overall with the house sized KV-4. I think the biggest surprise with the skill is not how often I get spotted, which is always, but how often I apparently fall out of sight only to get spotted once again. I see that orange light bulb more often than I thought I would.
One of the things the KV-4 has done for me is allow me to be a bit more of a “tank tourist,” so to speak. It is the first tank I have had that gets me into tier X battles. So I have gotten to see some of the biggest tanks in the game, like the Maus.
Maus in the background
Of course, being a tier VIII tank in a battle that includes three… Mauses… Mausi… Mäusen… whatever… and an E-100 means that my potential contributions were somewhat limited. I managed to bounce some shells off of the Maus on the other side… I knew it was a futile front shot, but I wanted to be able to say I have been there… but was otherwise mostly bait to distract the other team.
I also decided to spend the experience and the credits and go for the upgraded turret on the KV-4.
On the plus side, the new turret increases my view range by another 20m and beefs up the armor on the sides and rear of the turret. All good things.
On the down side, it is even bigger than the old turret, adding nearly 9,000 kg to the weight, adding a noticeable burden on the already struggling KV-4 engine… going up those hills on the Westfield map is painful… and it has a non-functional mini-turret on top which is purportedly a weak spot that everybody and their dog knows to shoot at.
The offending mini-turret
So I have been debating as to whether or not to stick with the upgraded turret. Doing so will clearly mean getting the engine upgrade as well as… slow tank is very slow.
But otherwise, I am enjoying the KV-4… which is a good thing, because it is still a long way to the ST-I. When it is the top tank in a match, it can shrug off a surprising number of hits. I zig-zagged up to a Jagpanther in one match, bouncing his shots by staying angled while pounding him.
I just have to stay out from under the rain of artillery. Ending up in a match with 4 SPGs on a side generally means a lot of pain if I am not very careful.
Oh, and don’t forget to change your password to pick up 300 gold.
The Sign on the Seaport Map April 18, 2013
Posted by Wilhelm Arcturus in entertainment, World of Tanks.3 comments
I only just noticed tonight what the big sign on the building said on the Seaport map in World of Tanks. I seem to be on the other side of the map most of the time.
In game advertising of a sort
I actually backed up my Type 59 on the bridge in the middle of a battle to get a shot of it.
Also, I was experimenting with depth of field trying to get a diorama effect in the shot, but I am not sure it came out as well as I wanted. I think my tank was too small in the frame to really express that.
World of Tanks Anniversary – Crazy Battles and Comic Guns April 16, 2013
Posted by Wilhelm Arcturus in entertainment, World of Tanks.Tags: KV-4, Luchs, Panzer I Ausf. C, YouTube
7 comments
The World of Tanks second anniversary event is now in the past. And what an event it was.
When Wargaming.net offers 5x experience for first victories, people come out of the woodwork. I thought I saw them tweet at one point that they set the concurrency record for the North American server, going beyond 40K simultaneous users.
And so the cast of regulars was joined by old vets and new blood all mixed together by the evil match maker into some battles of epic comedy. I was in a lot of battles that ended with lopsided, 15 kills to 2 style results. The only good thing was that I seemed to be on the winning side as often as the losing.
Not that they were all like that. There were some epic, down to the wire, last two players standing finishes. But overall, the theme seemed to be “bloodbaths.”
I took advantage of the 30% discount on tier VIII tanks to finally buy the KV-4 I have been primed to get for a while now.
Brand New KV-4
A lot of the gear you train for on the KV-3 applies to the KV-4, so I was not driving it totally stock. I had the radio fully upgraded and was able to mount the big gun from the KV-3. However, the really big gun requires 44K of experience to unlock, more than I had sitting around. So I had to head out of the barn with what I could train.
I also retrained my KV-2 crew and for the KV-4, having trained them up to ~95% towards their first skill/perk.
Equipment was on sale as well, marked down to half price, so I took the opportunity to purchase gun rammers and binocular periscopes and camo nets for a number of vehicles, including the KV-4, so I could avoid having to search and swap as much in the future.
My first outing with the KV-4 went pretty well. A victory. And I survived. And I even got a mastery badge.
First Battle in the KV-4
And, of course, the Steel Wall badge. I expect I will see a bunch of those going forward. When the KV-4 is at the top of the heap and I can position it right, it can bounce a lot of hits.
I found myself repeatedly tracked in one battle on the Airfield map, where I had take the route through the water between the two bases. A Tiger and a Jagpanther were both under cover and pelting me. However, I was angled just right, so aside from the track hits, they were doing almost no damage. A dozen hits in and I was at 98% health.
That was another of those lopsided battles, and while I held the beach, stuck there in a sniping duel, the rest of the team went up the middle and eventually flanked my two opponents. I was able to wander to within spitting distance of the cap before they hunted down the last guy. Another Steel Wall badge.
By the end of the weekend I had finally accumulated enough experience to get the big gun upgrade on the KV-4, the 107mm ZiS-24. The barrel for that gun may be my most comically over-sized yet.
Is that a ZiS-24 or are you fibbing again?
Again, in the company I keep, it looks really long.
Want to compare barrel lengths? C’mon!
So far I am doing okay with my latest big tank. It is a long grind to the next tank, my tier IX goal, and the ST-I. I think I will finish upgrading the KV-4, getting the upgraded turret for the extra armor, though that will require the suspension upgrade as well. And then the engine. This thing needs a bigger engine.
It wasn’t all heavy tanks. Saturday night saw the instance group reduced to just Potshot and I, so we went the tanks route for the evening. That kept us at tier V and below for the most part. We got out the BDR’s and ended up in a semi-comic slaughter at the beach resort on the South Coast map facing off against two more BDRs. If that T-34 hadn’t shown up to help them, they would have been ours.
We also tried out the Luchs, newly upgraded to a tier IV light tank and now not in a dead-end branch of the German tree. I tried out the new 3cm auto cannon that is available for it.
Luchs with the 3cm gun
It is fun if you can circle around and get behind people, though you have to get in close as the accuracy is very bad. I managed to circle around and take out one serious opponent before over extending and getting blown up. That isn’t really my play style and I later opted for the new, top end 5cm gun.
Probably the most amusing match of the weekend saw my in a Cruiser Mk. IV, which represented the extent of my UK tank experimentation, and Potshot in his PzKpfw III Ausf. A on the Karelia map. The match lineup included 8 of those Panzer I Ausf. C light tanks that featured in the video I posted on Sunday. There were four on each side, and everybody headed for the hill… it is always a race to the hill… where a bloodbath ensued. Watch the video.
It is available in larger sizes and quality up to 720p, and you can certainly pick out more detail viewing it in a larger format at highest quality than my blog can provide.
You get a sense of the comic amount of shells those little guys can spit out as they tear up the ground and each other. You can also see that arty was having a go at us, as the sides both had three SPGs each. Somehow I managed to survive that melee and was able to move on until I got a surprise of my own.
It was after that battle I decided I needed to turn my graphics settings down a notch or two. I had everything cranked up to high, but I was starting to lag and get low FPS with that many tanks firing around me. It became especially noticeable when I was getting hit. It might be time to look into an upgrade for the GTS 450.
In the end I did not play as much as I thought I might. Sunday saw me with a craving for something more slow paced, and I ended up playing more Civilization V than tanks. (I still haven’t found my Civ II disk.) But all in all, it was good fun and I managed to stock up on equipment at lower prices. Like Mrrx, I got almost every tank out of the barn and onto the field for at least one 5x win.
Now I have about 7 months left to make it to my end of year goal, driving a tier IX tank.
Pesky Panzer I Ausf. Cs Attack April 14, 2013
Posted by Wilhelm Arcturus in entertainment, World of Tanks.Tags: Hetzer, Panzer I Ausf. C, YouTube
4 comments
The Panzer I Ausf. C was introduced as part of the German light tank tree re-org, which also saw the Luchs pushed up a tier and given some new options. (That 3cm auto cannon is murder… but the nearly 20 second reload time is painful.)
These little beasties seem to have become something of the piranha platoon tank of choice. I haven’t played much below tier VI of late, but last night Potshot were down in tier V and below and these things were all over the place.
At one point we were out in the Arctic Region map and a pair of them took a run at my Hetzer in what turned out to be a less than optimum attack.
The first guy roars past but does not do much damage. He attempts to circle around the rock failing to notice the big pit on the other side. His pal catches me in the rear and flank and does do a lot of damage. But he slows down and gets popped by a team member pretty quickly. (You can see tracer rounds from the team mate early in the video flying past me.) Then I try to crush the first guy, who avoids my bulk. But a 75mm round into him finishes him off.
The video is available at up to 720p. In larger format you can see the first driver comment, “epic fail!”
Two Years of Tanks April 12, 2013
Posted by Wilhelm Arcturus in entertainment, World of Tanks.Tags: Anniversary, Meaningless Milestones
6 comments
World of Tanks is turning two years old, their launch date corresponding with Yuri’s Night back in 2011.
The game has come a long way since its launch two years ago. I always point at patch 8.0 and the physics update as being a major turning point for me, bringing me back to the game. But they have added so much to the game over time.
The celebration this weekend includes all sorts of special offers and boosts. 5x experience for your first victory of the day is usually enough, but there is a lot more than just that, as Mrrx detailed in his post on the subject.
For me, the discounts on tier VIII tanks, equipment, and crew retraining means that I will likely be driving my KV-4 before the night is through. I will have enough credits to buy it, kit it out, and transfer the crew I have been training up for it in the Churchill III. (It is my old KV-2 crew, and is close to 100% on their first skill/perk.) And I think I even have enough free experience to get through the gun upgrades. I should be set to start out on the climb to my tier IX tank goal.
In fact, the KV-4 discount is keeping me from coveting the KV-5, which is available for a limited time again in the Gift Shop.
And there is a special second anniversary code that you can enter to get a few freebies, including a day of premium.
2NDBDAYTANKS
That code is single use and expires on April 24. You have to log into the World of Tanks web site to redeem it for your account. Last night they tweeted that so many people were redeeming the code that the process was lagging tremendously.
So I expect I will be playing a fair amount of tanks this weekend. It should be interesting. These sorts of events always draw in a mix of players, often making the public match maker even more lopsided than usual. I expect a lot of people complaining about how horrible their team is, but I expect I will be too focused on learning a new tank to care much.
Credits, More Big Guns, and the A-32 April 9, 2013
Posted by Wilhelm Arcturus in entertainment, World of Tanks.Tags: A-32, ARL-44, Jagpanther
5 comments
No new tanks this week. I am still building up credits for the KV-4.
I actually have more than enough credits right now to purchase the beast, but I also want some reserves for the usual equipment, like a large caliber gun rammer. And that adds up fast. So I continue with my credit accumulation plan.
Oddly, Wargaming.net has an offer up in their Gift Shop this week for a million credits.
I am not sure I am ready to go there. I do not mind being part of the so-called Gold Economy, and paying for premium to speed things up some.
But doing the math in my head, that offer doesn’t seem like a huge deal. Using the 400 credits equals 1 gold conversion you can do in game, this looks like you are essentially getting 3,500 gold for $16.95, which is about a half a cent per unit of gold, which is about what it sells for in any case.
I suppose it is easier for some than doing the conversion in-game. And at least they aren’t selling experience outright.
With the KV-4 on hold for now, the only real changes over the past weeks was getting more big guns. This time is was the turn of the Jagpanther and the ARL-44.
On the Jagpanther the big gun doesn’t change the look of the vehicle very much.
Jagpanther with the 8.8 cm gun
Jagpanther with the 10.5 cm gun
The new gun is a little longer and a little more stout I suppose. And it doesn’t really change my armor penetration abilities or accuracy much… the 8.8 cm gun is a wee bit better at both… but it does give my damage a big boost. A pity that every shot costs four times as much. It is probably good that I carry less shells and shoot them more slowly.
As with every upgrade, it doesn’t turn turn me into superman, but I do more damage when I hit. And more damage translates into more experience. There is only one more item left to research on the Jagpanther, the last track upgrade. I am not sure how much those will help, except as a step to getting me toward elite status. It might boost my effective flank hit points, but if I am taking hits on my flanks, I am already in deep trouble.
They will probably come off just as often
Not that elite status will be within my grasp any time soon. To get there I have to research both the Ferdinand and the Jagpanther II, both of which require 77.5K of experience. At my rate of play, that is going to take me a while. But at least I will have a while to think on which of the two I will go after first.
On the ARL 44 though, the big gun is yet another evolution through the visual comedy stylings of the French tank series. It starts with a turret as big as a barn.
That is a big turret
And ends up with a gun barrel so long it seems to be compensating for something.
Not awkward at all…
The gun compares in length with my arch-nemesis on the field, the Super Pershing. I hate those things and their spaced front armor.
Super Pershing in the background
Upgrading to the final 90mm gun on the ARL 44, the DCA 45, has just the opposite improvement as the upgrade on the Jagpanther. All three of the 90mm gun options do the amount of base damage. But each step up the chain improves penetration and accuracy, with only a minor reduction in reload time.
In the end, the result is the same though… more damage on targets.
I would like to report that I used these two big gun upgrades to good effect, but I had one of those weekends where losses seemed to be the norm. I was in one match where I very nearly became the person I hate and started yelling at my own team for being idiots in chat. On one flank three of us were doing well, but on the other our team appeared to have decided to feed themselves one at a time into a deadly crossfire, with the expected results.
I held my tongue though, as I was on the “early to dead” roster myself in more than a few matches as I ran out to play with my new toys.
This got me looking at other tanks in my garage, in hopes of finding something with which I could extract a win, and I ended up casting my eyes on the A-32.
This previously light, now medium, tank was part of the WoT pre-order plan, which I bought, and has been sitting in my garage since launch two years ago, largely unused.
The A-32
I got it out and despite having a 55% crew and big list of downsides (poor armor, poor penetration, inaccurate gun, mediocre view and signal range), I did okay playing it as a light tank. But I am not sure what I really want to do with it.
If I were going up the Soviet medium line, I could use crews from that to do better while gaining additional experience for them in turn. But since I don’t really need yet another branch of the tree to pursue at the moment, the A-32 will probably continue to lead a quiet life in the back of the garage.
Items from the Mail Bag – Press Releases and Special Offers Edition April 8, 2013
Posted by Wilhelm Arcturus in Blizzard, entertainment, Mail Bag, World of Tanks, World of Warcraft.Tags: Assault on Wall Street, darkfall, MegaWars III, Stellar Emperor, Twitter
9 comments
Digging into the mail bag, another reminder that I haven’t felt inspired to write about much new of late.
Darkfall: Unholy Wait
Aventurine sent me the press release announcing that Darkfall: Unholy Wars would finally launch on April 16th, after a five month delay.
Back in September of 2012 they announced that the original Darkfall would shut down on November 15th to make room for Unholy Wars, which was slated to launch on the 20th of the same month. And then… well… the Aventurine reputation needed to be maintain. So here we are, seven months after that announcement, and the game should launch next week.
Now, the press release points out that this time was well spent, that much was learned from the beta. We shall see next week. Maybe.
Blizzard Remains Steadfast
After running out my seven free days of World of Warcraft, I remained on the fence about whether it would be worthwhile to subscribe or not. And then, ten days later, I received an email from Blizz with a subject line asking me to resubscribe to the game.
I was intrigued. I wondered if Blizz might sweeten the deal now that they had me thinking about the game. A special offer might have been enough to tip the balance.
But there was no special offer. It was just a link to the standard subscription page. Blizz isn’t at a point right now where it feels the need to anything special to get people to come back.
Twitter Pushes Advertising
Twitter has decided that I am a small business and, as such, I need to advertise on their service. So I received a whole stream of messages from them offering me a free $50 advance on my advertising.
I have not taken them up on their offer, having no idea what I would even promote.
Mega Wars IV
Crimson Leaf Games, which recreated the classic CompuServe game Mega Wars III that I poked my nose into ages ago, has taken the idea a step further and created Mega Wars IV which includes a full graphical client done in Microsoft Silverlight.
Interestingly, Stellar Emperor, the version of the game that ran on GEnie, which I have also covered, went this route in the early 90s, adding on a graphical client and updating the game, thus diverging it from what stated off as its twin, Mega Wars III.
Populist Wish Fulfillment
I keep getting press releases around a film titled Assault on Wall Street. The synopsis for the picture is:
Jim is an average New Yorker living a peaceful life with a well paying job and a loving family. Suddenly, everything changes when the economy crashes causing Jim to lose his job, home and wife. Filled with anger and rage, Jim snaps and goes to extreme lengths to seek revenge for the life taken from him.
The poster shows the star, Dominic Purcell a pistol in one hand, a combat rifle in the other, with bullet riddled NYPD cars and SWAT teams deploying in the background.
So, yeah, gun violence. I guess that takes Occupy Wall Street up a notch. Let’s go kill the 1%!
Given that the only name I recognize in the cast is Eric Roberts, and that they are sending press releases to random gaming blogs, I am going to guess they couldn’t get any funding from those in the 1%.
World of Tanks Rolls On
Wargaming.net is very good about sending out regular press releases. Two big things they have coming up are the World of Tanks 8.5 update, which includes more German tanks, redone maps, and changes to what non-premium accounts can do. There is a preview over at The Mittani.
And then there is World of Tanks Blitz.
This is Wargaming.net’s attempt to bring World of Tanks to mobile platforms. Featuring 7 vs. 7 battles, I will be interested to see how they translate their Windows shooter to that mobile world.
