Civilization – Operation Torch and the Russian Front

There were only three of us online and in the Google hangout last week.  Mattman either decided to enjoy his vacation or he read last week’s post and took it the wrong way.  Hrmm…

But for those of us online, the game started getting more interesting.  After much laying of groundwork last time, all of us seemed ready to get stuck into things.

Potshot and I left off wondering where our first expeditionary force ought to land.  As we started off, Potshot declared for “Operation Torch,” a reference to the 1942 allied landings in North Africa, which included Casablanca amongst its rather dispersed objectives.  In the game, Morocco was to the southwest of us and I had already started forming up the beginnings of a landing force with Casablanca as a target.

Landing north of Casablanca

I actually had to fight my way against yet more barbarian hordes in order to grab a foothold on the island that Morocco occupied, so in initially I was probably helping Morocco out.  Then I planted a city on his island to act as a forward redoubt in case things did not go well.

I think my intentions here are clear

More after the cut.

You Don’t Have ProSiebenSat.1 to Kick Around Anymore

Well, that de-escalated quickly.

Sony Online Entertainment announced today that European players of DC Universe Online, PlanetSide 2, and EverQuest II will have their accounts merged back into the SOE fold and become direct customer of SOE, which is what they were two years ago when this whole PR disaster started. (The sordid history is over at EQ2 Wire.)

Since those three titles do not represent all of SOE’s games, I am not sure what this means to European EverQuest players (Did that ever get migrated? It was promised/threatened at one point.) but it seems to be a move in the right direction.

Never a popular proposition, the whole thing was summed up early on by a cartoon that depicted SOE selling off their European customers, represented by a protesting child, to a dubious looking man in a van.  A child molester as the metaphor for your plans is never a good thing.  Once that image took hold, there was probably no hope of a happy ending.

There is, of course, a FAQ about the transition up on the SOE forums.  The official cut off between the two is July 1, but it appears that the two year old region locking has been turned off as of today players can now play on any server they so desire.  The rest of it… changing launchers, updating accounts, conversion of SevenCash to StationCash, and the “you know it is going to happen” complaint from somebody who prefers ProSiebenSat.1 to SOE.. will transition over the coming weeks.  Read the FAQ for a vague guess at how this will roll out.

Anyway, put this on the list with the NGE and the Station Launcher as another SOE scheme that did not quite work out as planned.