Comments for

Comment on Darkfall Should Offer a Lifetime Subscription by Ragnarok

Ragnarok — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 11:08:21 +0000

In hindsight? Innovation is designing a server that can handle battles with over a thousand players involved.

Is anyone else even shooting for that mark? An entirely un-instanced world that can support massive-scale PvP?

There has never been anything like it.

Comment on Challenging the Concept of Challenge by MMORPGS: Adult Playgrounds « Game by Night

MMORPGS: Adult Playgrounds « Game by Night — Thu, 13 Aug 2009 16:00:14 +0000

[...] I’ve talked about challenge in MMOs before, so I won’t rehash that topic here. I don’t believe we stay with this genre because they’re hard or require great intellectual throughput. I think we stay here because, well, we like doing something with other people, actively or passively. [...]

Comment on IMPORTANT: Fires of War is moving! by Ferrel

Ferrel — Mon, 27 Jul 2009 12:47:45 +0000

I’ll update my link!

Comment on Challenging the Concept of Challenge by Ferrel

Ferrel — Fri, 24 Jul 2009 18:42:31 +0000

You’re pretty dead on here. There isn’t a lot of challenge out there for us these days. I even would argue that PvP doesn’t offer as much challenge as players let on (I wrote about that too).

We rarely have to learn raids on our own anymore. Now the “challenge” is just herding cats. Getting players to do their tiny part correctly is hard and, as you point out, that job isn’t hard.

How can a rogue that only has to sit behind a mob and not pull agro consider that challenging? In general, it isn’t anymore other than the fact that that spreadsheet raids put so much pressure on hitting a DPS number. It isn’t really challenging so much as a combination of lucky rolls and paying attention.

Then again though, that might have always been the truth. Each individual part of a raid isn’t that challenging but the whole thing together is? Perhaps so.

Regardless, great article and thank you for the mention!

Comment on Looking for advice… by Raegn

Raegn — Fri, 24 Jul 2009 15:00:15 +0000

Thanks Ferrel! With the money situation, I’m looking at making the move within the next month or so. I’ll be in touch!

Comment on Looking for advice… by Ferrel

Ferrel — Fri, 24 Jul 2009 13:41:34 +0000

Raegn

I’ve been hosting my own sites for a long time now. Epic Slant being the most recent that I’ve made public. Historically I’ve always used Godaddy. They’re not the cheapest but they are reasonable and reliable for me.

When it comes to your bandwidth cap don’t be overly concerned for now. You really don’t need unlimited. Blogs like ours don’t serve a lot of “large media” and our hits, while not insignificant, don’t eat up a ton of bandwidth.

At any rate, if you need more explanation or end up needing help getting your site going don’t hesitate to shoot me an email or AIM. I don’t mind at all.

Comment on More Aion Thoughts From China Live by Ferrel

Ferrel — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 16:37:41 +0000

Great update! As always I do appreciate it. I like some of what I’ve heard about the game.

I’m not sure yet though. I met LotRO in a bar and it looked lonely. We’ve been dating for a few weeks now and things are going well.

That doesn’t mean we’re exclusive though!

Comment on Weighing Out Payment Models by Poll: Payment Models « Bio Break

Poll: Payment Models « Bio Break — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 14:56:17 +0000

[...] July 12, 2009 by Syp First, read through this quick article over at Fires of WAR. [...]

Comment on Weighing Out Payment Models by Ferrel

Ferrel — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 13:59:47 +0000

I like the idea of the eastern model. That sounds pretty interesting to me. I don’t believe I play more than 300 hours a week and, if I did so, I’d just pay a little more. I assume time rolls over too?

I also don’t mind paying for micro-expansions as long as they’re actually content. If it is just “100 new quests” and “new items” that are more copy/paste than new I get upset. It would be interesting though to see someone try it.

I also like the “service charges.” Those would be name changes, character transfers, gender changes (weird but eh) and the likes.

Cash shops continue to scare me. If the items are fluff only, like outfits, health potions or temporary exp boosters I don’t mind. If they’re actual equipment I’m against it.

Comment on I broke… by Lars

Lars — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 12:33:29 +0000

Heh, you sure went through a lot of effort to get that running. FFXI was a fun game but I still marvel at all the silly decisions they made that make it difficult for us to give them our money:

1) I’m not sure if this is still the case, but when the game first came out, it randomly assigned you to a server… if you want to play with a friend, you have to buy a buddy pass in game to let them come to your server. Which means you are leveling up and they get to start over.
2) They delete your characters after 3 months of unsubscribing. Really. I seriously would have come back to check out the changes (I hear there have been lots of great new features) but I just don’t want to deal with the hassle of petitioning to see if they can undelete my character from some tape backup somewhere.
3) The PlayOnline software was terrible.
4) Perhaps to prevent macroing, they used to prevent the game from running windowed. Which meant I couldn’t do anything else with my computer while sitting around shouting LFG. Which was often.

Despite that, I actually still have rather fond memories of the game. I loved the combat system and the job system.