I really don’t have anything terribly brilliant to say today. Was a busy day at work, and I am steel reeling from finally getting that faction post hatched onto the page. Still feel like I am not 100% over the sinus/pneumonia mess of last week. Been dealing with it still because apparently I infected my loving wife, so she has been going through the all too familiar motions.
Down subscribers? Create new fees.
Yesterday Blizzard announced that they would be rolling out an exciting new feature for World of Warcraft. Soon you will be able to run dungeons with all your RealID friends on other servers. If that sounds exciting, prepare to shell out another monthly fee for this premium service similar to that of the mobile guild chat.
With the continued popularity of the Dungeon Finder, many players have been asking for a way to group up with real-life friends who play on other realms to take on instances together. Today, we wanted to give you a heads up about a new feature currently in development that will allow players to invite Real ID friends of the same faction to a party regardless of the realm they play on, and then queue up for a 5-player regular or Heroic dungeon.
As this is a fairly complex service to develop, we don’t have a release date to share quite yet. It’s important to note that as with some of the other convenience- and connectivity-oriented features we offer, certain elements of the cross-realm Real ID party system will be premium-based, though only the player sending the invitations will need to have access to the premium service. We’ll have more details to share with you as development progresses — in the meantime, you may begin to see elements of the feature appear on the World of Warcraft PTR.
This feels suspiciously like Activision putting the screws to a business unit that had to publically announce they were down 600,000 subscribers. I have read somewhere in my travels that the number is more like 800,000, but at the time of writing this I was unable to find where I had read that. Either way, just like any commoditized service, if usage goes down you have to raise fees somehow to maintain profit margins for the shareholders. Since raising the monthly fee would be tantamount to suicide, seems like they are going to continue the tradition of nickel and diming its users with optional premium grade services.
PSN Down Again
This one seriously felt like Déjà vu. Before lunch I was reading an article that the PSN network was coming back online, and that users could finally look forward to using it again. I was happy to see that life might be returning to normal for their users. Then about 3:00 I did a run through my google reader and saw the headlines that PSN was down yet again.
ZDnet has a decent article about what occurred today. Seems like once again Sony was compromised. Now it still isn’t certain if this is really an Anonymous attack as some claim, of if this is a group just trying to plant the blame squarely on the high profile group. There are signs that it might be, considering Anonymous did issue a statement to Sony. Either way, Sony has most definitely pissed off the wrong people.
I fear if PSN was compromised so quickly, another round of attacks at SOE will not be far behind. At this point, I can’t really see how Sony can bounce back from this one. A little over a week ago Tobold made the very serious pronouncement that SOE is Doomed. If another round of compromises comes through, I seems completely set in stone that this will be the case. With them already struggling before this debacle, I just can’t see them surviving intact.
Pen and Paper and Bytes
One of my biggest laments since venturing into the world of the responsible adult is that I really do not have time, or availability to play the pen and paper games I loved so much. For years I have scratched this itch with various MMO titles. While they are great in their own right, they still pale from the full on creative expression that pen and paper gaming gives you.
A friend of mine was feeling the same way, and proposed we try gaming online. He found a cool tool called iTabletop, that allows the GM to present visuals to the players and deal with various rolls that are the trapping of any pen and paper game. Only time will tell if this little experiment will work but I am looking forward to it. We are planning on playing a custom Steampunk setting, using the World of Darkness rule set for simplicity sake. The “d10” system of Whitewolf has long been a favorite of mine for ease of character creation and speed of play.
Minecraft meets Wonderboy
Lastly this week I have been playing with a new game that just got released on Steam, Teraria. I have heard it most often called 2D Minecraft, but in truth it is a lot more. What it really reminds me of is the Sega Genesis game Wonder Boy in Monsterworld. Basically start with a side scrolling 16 bit title, and add construction elements similar to Minecraft, and you have what the game plays like.
I am not very far along, and being an alpha game like Minecraft was there are numerous bugs. When I try and run the game full screen on my laptop it runs at something silly like 500 fps and becomes completely unplayable. However the game itself is compelling enough that I can see this really catching on. I look forward to trying it out on a multiplayer setting. Some of the toys you can see in the above video really make me want to explore the depths of the randomly generated world.
I agree, saying that they’re down 600,000 subs is kind of hard, then to add another paid service to the list of paid services. I’ve heard it’s going to be rolled into the auction house/guild chat situation, and only one person in the group needs to have the service itself to invite their RealID friends.
Sounds worth it, right? Not to me at least, since I’m usually home and never out and about using my phone. I think most of the WoW masses may say the same. Still loving what you’re doing Bel and the Stalwarts are doing great too.
Between this and PSN going down consistently, it sounds like my days of catching up on the PS2 games and older games is coming up.
Wow, that iTabletop service looks really cool, can’t wait to try it out! You WERE planning on inviting me sometime, right… right?!?! haha
(glad you’re feeling better, sorry about the missus :P)