Thursday, July 18, 2013

Various and Sundry in July

The summer doldrums are in full swing.

Outside, the heat has climbed into the oppressive levels, with the humidity to match.  Con season is in high gear, with SD Comic Con this week and less than a month until Gen Con, with PAX Prime at the end of August.

And right on cue, an update on the Pathfinder Online sandbox MMO surfaced:


Not a lot to find interesting; there's background and there's some buildings, but only a few seconds worth of actual figures.  The concept of a sandbox fantasy MMO is interesting, so I'm wondering about the details that weren't shown in the video clip.

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Another thing I've wondered is whether the next gen consoles will push MMOs away from PCs and into the console format.  Blizzard could be getting some valuable development time in that regard with porting D3 to the XBox360 and PS3, but the major stumbling blocks are XBLive and PSN.  Without the cross platform connectivity, that seems to ensure that MMOs' major selling point (the massively multi part) will be balkanized.  However, I would never bet against Blizzard being able to figure something out in this regard.

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Heard around MMOs:

In Age of Conan:

[In Eiglophian Mountains, a female toon wearing almost nothing runs by up the mountain path]

Female Toon (in Gen Chat):  Wooo!  I'm invisible!
Me:  Is this Order of the Stick or something?
Third Toon:  Is [toon name] naked again?
Me: Yeah, just ran right by me.  Because, you know, a frigid mountain climb goes better without clothing.


In World of Warcraft:

[In Alterac Valley]

Warrior:  We need a tank here by Drek!
Mage:  WTF, man.  You're marked AS a tank.
Warrior:  Oh.  Whoops.


In TOR:

[On Taris in Gen Chat]

First Toon:  Where is it?
Second Toon:  What?
First Toon:  That wonderful Tarisian beachfront property that the Black Sun sold me!  They said the view was breathtaking!
Second Toon:  Can I have what you're smoking?  I can sure use some.


EtA:  "is"..  "are"...   I are a writer, right?

4 comments:

  1. EQ Next is on my radar because sandbox boasting and especially their storeybricks power-up. let's pray for a cooler autumn season!
    oh and, you don't actually play AoC, or do you?

    btw, yay for Battle Bards in sidebar! thanks! ^^

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    1. I'd forgotten about EQ Next, probably because of being inundated with D&D Next stuff. It's a sandbox too, so I wonder how both that and Pathfinder Online will work.

      Yes, I do play AoC on the Set(US) server, although I think they're combining servers shortly. I've got an L54 Barbarian, who is bouncing around between Eiglophian Mountains and Fields of the Dead. Mid-range leveling slows down to a crawl for me until I get past the L#6 range, and then the 7-8-9 levels go faster.

      I've noticed that most (about 90% of the "OO look, Bewbs!" crowd never leaves either the Tortage starting area or the low level zones immediately after it. And even then, they almost never announce that sort of thing in the F2P Gen Chat.

      You're welcome! It's a good podcast, and I'm happy to add it!

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  2. Lol, I love that SWTOR quote. :D Love it when people get in character for some silly fun.

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    1. I really do like Taris, mainly for the offbeat Gen Chat. You do see that from time to time in Alderaan, but Taris has some of the goofiest people hanging around...

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