They Said Whaaaat?: “Roper Talks Sense” or “Launch Day Blues”

As skeptic as I am of the upcoming Star Trek Online by Cryptic Studios, this gives me hope:

“The biggest impact was that there was a lot of outcry when it happened and this leaked into reviews – even from editors that never played in the head-start time period. It was something we had to do for the good and longevity of the game, but trust us – with Star Trek we’ll have a LOT more people in the beta near the end to better test the global experience and difficulty curves.”
- Bill Roper, MMOCrunch: An Interview with Cryptic’s Bill Roper, re: Lessons learnt from the launch of Champions Online.

Se7en Tidbits: “Thinning out Jedis” or “What MMO Costs More Than $15 a Month?”

Here are a few tidbits that caught my attention for one reason or another this week:

• “You have to admit, that’s quite a smart way to keep the numbers of Jedi limited.” – Spinks, SWTOR: Jedi, Jedi Everywhere (and all the stars did sink), Spinksville.

• “Who wouldn’t want want to fly around space in a cube?” – Werit, STO’s Next Faction, Werit’s Blog. [Bronte: Who indeed? RESISTANCE IS FUTILE!]

• “(Somebody find an MMORPG that charges more than $14.99 a month please.)” – Willhelm2451, Lawsuit – WoW Isn’t Easy Enough, The Ancient Gaming Noob. [Bronte: I tried searching for five minutes. Oddly enough I couldn't find anything!]

• “Seriously, how dare the designers allow such an atrocity.  That’s like letting a kindergartner hit the square block through the round hole.” – iTZKooPA, You Learn Something New Everyday, Project Lore. [Bronte: Wait, you can't put the square block through the circle? WHAAAAT?"]

• “The Alganon team has been working hard lately, taking the servers down more frequently to patch and update, which should help to minimize problems at launch.” – Rubi Bayer, Alganon’s State of the Game address, Massively. [Bronte: This should be... fun.]

• “Lore in our games is the essential connective tissue that holds the illusion together.” – Julian, Why lore matters, Kill Ten Rats.

• “The conspiracy theories that have found their way into the gaming space can be pretty amazing.” – Bill Roper, An Interview with Cryptic’s Bill Roper, MMOCrunch. [Bronte: Funny how that works out, Bill ]

“Warning, You Might be Drowning” or “Live Disasters”

I came across this interesting piece of news in InformationWeek.

New York state authorities may use gaming platforms such as the Xbox, PlayStation or Wii to inform citizens about natural or man-made catastrophes. State officials are currently testing the system on the Xbox 360, claiming that youth spend more time with gaming consoles these days than with television or radio. The later are the traditional mediums for disaster information dissemination.

On paper it seems like a sound strategy. I can’t help but wonder what is next in the incessant evolution of consoles: ‘Insert foot in this compartment for a pedicure’? ‘Place dirty laundry in the disc tray’?