boymeetsgame.com

I’ve got nothing against game-based fan fiction, but the idea that there are 51 examples of it devoted to Tetris on fanfiction.net is just ridiculous. I know it’s not the official indicator of game-to-game fan-fic ratios, but still.

SCE Australia have finally announced their 40Gb PS3 for $700. This represents a complete turn-around, not least because when the PS3 was originally launched elsewhere in the world there was already the choice of either the 40 or 60GB SKUs, but for whatever reason it was decided that Australia and Europe would only want the 60Gb one. Now, however, they intend to discontinue the 60Gb version once the current stock is sold.

Bizarrely, this discontinuation seems to be something that only Australia is condemned to suffer - it doesn’t appear to be happening in Europe. I can only hope that this is a precursor to the announcement of the world-wide (including PAL territories) release of the 80Gb model previously only available in South Korea, although this still seems unlikely.

To top things off, this new 40Gb version is said to contain no backwards capability whatsoever - not even their stop-gap emulation software. This seems particularly strange given Sony’s once vociferously pledged ongoing commitment to the PS2.

I understand that Sony and Microsoft don’t have Nintendo’s luxury of not actually making a loss on hardware sales, and that this $700 unit represents a significant undertaking on their part. Unfortunately though it seems far too little at a time when the PS3 is really floundering in the console war.

Not only did we have the Emotion Engine (a chip which allows PS3 owners everywhere else in the world to play PS1 & 2 games) replaced by far-inferior emulation software, but now we don’t even get the otherwise worldwide price cut. The PAL territories (essentially Australia and Europe) were already getting a raw deal price wise, considering that not only was the hardware inferior but the RRP was considerably more expensive than in the US and Japan. Oh well, at least now everyone else will get to be as disadvantaged as us.
http://blogs.theage.com.au/screenplay/archives//006752.html

I recently took part in the 2nd Beta of Turbine’s Lord of the Rings Online. This was my first run as a beta tester, and I have to say that at that point it was fairly polished. I’ve since been accepted into the public beta (3) but haven’t logged in yet, and the main reason for that is my graphics card. Even playing the game on the lowest graphics setting I still have a MAJOR lag problem.

The few times I amped it up to full bore, however, I was gob-smacked by the lush environments. Possibly in line with the depth of Tolkien’s Middle Earth mythos Turbine have decided to avoid the cartoon stylings of something like World of Warcraft in favour of going for a super-realistic aesthetic and, as far as the environments go, they have succeeded magnificently. You’ve only got to log onto one of the umpteen fan fora around to hear enthusiastic excurses on the water ripples of Eriador.

When it comes to character design, however, things are less wonderful. I wouldn’t go so far as to say that it’s a failure, but once that word is out there there’s not a lot I can do about it (sorry, Turbine). The faces are Everquest-ly bland, and the lack of bright colours due to the realist aesthetic make everything a bit drab. Admittedly, I felt the same about the ugly humans in Warcraft when I first got it, but soon learned things looked different in-game. Perhaps the same will happen for LOTRO.

There’s also the problem of choosing race: the options available are male or female Human, male or femael Elf, male or female Hobbit, or Dwarf (this last on account of the fact that Tolkien’s dwarfs - his plural, not ours - are bearded whether they’re male or female, leaving little difference for gameplay). Having decided that gameplay is going to be heroic, Turbine (who have rights to use material from both the books and the films - something no previous Middle Earth video game has had) have excluded the option to play as any of Sauron’s minions. After the player’s character reaches Level 10 there is the option to play as a minion of Sauron for a limited time which constitutes the games PvP content, although as I have not played the PvP content I cannot really comment on the mechanics other than saying I couldn’t be bothered getting my lvl 10 dwarf to Bree in order to access it.

This limitation may be nicely in keeping with Tolkien’s sentiments, but limits an already severly limited franchise even further. Tolkien’s Middle Earth stories may have effectively started the Fantasy genre and its susequent MMO evolution, but it is relatively late to the game itself and has been left few trappings to appear original. People are deservedly weary of sword and spell MMOs, and its extensive mythos has impaired it in ways other franchises are not. In Tolkien, for instance, there are only a handful of wizards in history, whereas in other MMOs there are as many as there are players who create them. While this keeps an encounter with a wizard a special occasion and prevents the streets of Rivendell from being clogged with them, it removes a key attraction from MMOs: freedom. When I play Warcraft I can be made to feel that I am changing the course of Azeroth’s history, a sense that is capitalised upon in the Burning Crusade and its new races. Those who have read Tolkien, however, will probably know how Middle Earth’s history turns out in the end (at least the Third Age). While this still leaves room for the accomplishments of unknown heroes, the suspension of disbelief is that much harder when 90% of people you encounter are other such heroes, most likely 30 levels more accomplished than you and replete with shiny mounts.

The HUD and general interface will be familiar to Warcraft players, and indeed seems to be modelled on it to be accessible to defecting players. The crafting system is interesting as any profession is composed of three subsidiary crafts that overlap with other professions, although some things need to be worked out before launch: during beta 2 there was no beginners’ forge in Thurin’s Hall (the dwarf city). All in all however it seemed like a decent MMO, if a little disappointing to someone who saw the coming wave of licenced mythoi (LOTRO, Age of Conan and, to a lesser extent, Warhammer Online) as the antidote to our addiction to Warcrack. I feel unable to give a proper evaluation, however, without playing it for considerably longer on a machine that can handle the lovely landscapes.

A friend and I went to see the Night in Fantasia: Symphonic Games Edition orchestral performance of video game scores the other night at Sydney Town Hall, having seen the Eminence orchestra at the Sydney Conservatorium last December for their “Passion” performance. Eminence are a group of Con kids who are obviously avid video game and Anime fans, and state they established the ensemble to introduce gamers to the world of classical music. Their Passion show was a sampler of such work, including selections from both video game and Anime scores, as well as Brahms’ ‘Hungarian Dance’ and Saint-Saëns’ ‘Danse Macabre’. Not being as avid a fan of Anime as some, I was particularly eager to see that they had split their popular Night in Fantasia show into dedicated games and Anime shows.

As with the Passion show several of the game scores featured were from Japanese games never unreleased in the Western world, let alone little old Australia. The organisers’ obvious fetish for performing music from the Chrono (Trigger) series may be due to an intention to educate us to virtues of the game, which is fine, but I’d say I’m not alone in the audience for wanting to hear music from the games they know and love performed by a large symphony. The popularity of their John Williams show alone is testament to their audiences’ love of something familiar. Even when the scores were from games familiar to Australians, often more obscure pieces were chosen (I don’t think I recognised a single part of their World of Warcraft medley).

This orchestra was much larger than the Con show, and featured a choir and use of the Town Hall pipe organ (*bliss!*) although, while I’m not sure how much of the concert hall is acoustic and how much is amplified, there seemed to a problem with the organ being drowned out by the other instruments. It was also nice to see a screen behind the orchestra that played clips from the games the scores were in. As with previous performances the evening’s guests included several video game composers from Japan, and this is possibly the source of my criticism. Don’t get me wrong: I think it’s terrific that they’d come all the way out here and, in some cases, take part in performing their work; and the people from Eminence are hardly obscure fanboys. Their eminence (sorry, I couldn’t resist) has seen them chosen to perform the soundtrack to the new Anime series Romeo X Juliet.

The problem arises from the fact that their presence seems to dictate in part the choices for the set list. It seems almost as if in order to honour each guest 2 or 3 pieces of games they’ve worked on are performed and, when you’ve got 7 guests as there was the other night, that’s pretty much the whole show. As there was no pen on hand I didn’t get a chance to fill out a feedback form this time (yes, you can’t even escape them during a night at the symphony), but if I’d had the chance I’d have drawn attention to this. There’s also the fact that while they pretty much kept to what was on the original promotional poster, I’m sure I saw a newer one at Kinokuniya that claimed Matt Uelmen (of Diablo and Burning Crusade fame) was going to be present. He wasn’t. *sigh*

All in all I probably won’t be rushing out for tickets to the next Eminence night, although that has more to do with a lack of variety extending to things familiar to me than any question of quality. The orchestra is skilled and professional; they just might benefit from a little more variety. I hear it’s the spice of life.

Our PS2 died a few months ago which totally sucked and I put off replacing it because it just didn’t feel justified with the PS3 about to come it. But the more I thought about it, the more I realised that my likelihood of forking out $$$ for the PS3 was very slim in the immediate and medium term future. We don’t have an HD TV and the whole Blu-ray revolution does little for me. I don’t buy a huge amount of movie DVDs anyway and there isn’t one must have PS3 exclusive title. But we still had lots of playable PS2 titles and enough PS2 titles that were on the covet-list so yesterday we got a new PS2 and I don’t feel even the slightest bit bad about it.

Wandrew started playing the Lord of the Rings beta yesterday. They’ve still got a link to sign up for it on Lotr Online, I registered so hopefully I’ll be seen as worthy enough. It looks fun. The player mods could do with some improvement, they’re just a little boring looking and too Poser-ish (shudder). Not a patch on WoW. But there are some nice touches like the naming suggestions when you go to create an Elf so that you can get in character without having to be a huge Tolkien buff. Also wandrew tells me that you can set up back stories for your character and genealogies which all sounds pretty pad.

If you like the beta, LOTR are offering pre-order “Founder Memberships” including a lifetime membership for $199 (or $9.99/month so you’d want to be playing for 20 months), from what I gather you’d need to buy the game as well (I think you’ve got a month to do that). Wish WoW offered lifetime membership. Stupid Warcraft.

The Sydney Morning Herald has a couple of stories on how there are only 3000 active Australian Second Lifers and companies buying up islands there are just wasting their money. Well, duh! I’m actually surprised it is that high.

The Mashup article compares it to Tumbarumba Shire on the border of New South Wales and Victoria which has a similar population. It’s an obtuse comparison because the inhabitants of Tumbarumba Shire aren’t anywhere as influential or hip as those of Second Life. If you’re a tech or a communications company then it’s imperative that you have your little stake of SL so you hang out with the cool kids. Or at least stand somewhere near them. Of course many of the cool kids in SL are super geeks in real life, but enough of them are not. Even better, some are famous and rich. If you’ve got the money to blow then hey, why not? It’s probably better spending it building something in SL than on making a fake blog or some other pathetic “viral” campaign that will just prove an embarrassment later down the track or illegal if Europe has its way.

For the record, I can’t stand Second Life. Give me Warcraft any day.

Stumbled upon a blog referencing those Chinese WoW Coke ads, it brought back so many happy memories, I had to share them with you:

And this unofficial Wow Coke ad:

Wandrew is off with the fairies, well, the elves at least. Blood Elves to be precise.

This guild invite was found on the general chat around Silver Moon (Blood Elf territory for those who haven’t rushed out to play the Burning Crusades):

THE BEAUTIFUL PEOPLE are now accepting other members of the Horde into our guild. Looking for able bodied Warriors and Druids. We may take some Shamans. Come be a great meat shield for the greatest race ever to grace Azeroth! (RP Guild)

Beautiful indeed. You can check out some my screenshots of Blood Elves (along with some plebby Night Elves and other less blessed races) here.