NaNoWriMo

You only really lose if you never try. I personally did not try and that's my loss.

I had outlined an idea and did start, but quickly fell out of love with how it was going. So in my inspired laziness I decided that as it was a loss either way (I dawdled far far too much) I would wait till the last weekend and try hammer out as many words on a new direction and tone of the novel idea as I could.

Then of course life intervened. So I lost for not following the advice I gave other people several times. It doesn't matter if it's rubbish, if it barely makes sense or only has a fleeting relationship with coherence, it only matters that you write. 50,000 words or bust, quality optional.

Perhaps next year I'll smack myself in the head and do it properly. Either way I must say congrats to Sehkmet, Renalae, Sypster, MorrowS and a huge congratulations to the absolutely nuts Scarybooster who wrote his on an iPhone.

It's only 8am GMT here so there may well be more congrats to come, Sareini and shinobitsn I'm looking at you.

Intellectual Properly

In my fit of nerd rage previously, Terry made a good comment.

It's box art. It's supposed to get your attention and trigger certain subliminal behavior responses.

As far as Marketing is concerned, fighting and spaceships and explosions with a clean cut looking fellow front and center > 5 balding nobodies of various colors with a collection of head ridges sitting around a table, maybe arguing or having tea or something.

He’s completely correct. If you counted up the episodes of the Original series and the amount of times the Captain Kirked out, you’d get a fairly action packed show. Times changed with Captain Picard who favoured more diplomatic or cerebral solutions. Don’t be fooled though, he could still kick your ass up around your ears. Captain Sisko went his own way and had a war to fight, between Gods and Demons and a proper war with Klingons and Cardassians and Breen and so on. Captain Janeway sadly was portrayed about fifteen thousand different ways per season but had her fair share of ass kicking. Captain Archer went a special crazy for all of season three when someone in Paramount decided that the equation “Sci fi+GRIMDARK=Money” applied to any and all science fictions.

On a related but otherwise totally different point, Jim Butcher has a map (illustrated by Priscilla Spencer) now for his Codex Alera series. This is a good thing. It’s a lovely piece of artwork and helps flesh out the world.

Only it’s backwards. Rather, in my head it is. For some reason I had always held Canea as being to the east rather than the west. Perhaps I didn’t pay enough attention, or perhaps I just preferred it that way. Such is the point that people start abusing canon and doing slashfiction. If anyone knows which way up or around the world goes, it’s the author, not me.

This brings me to a point though. The world of Alera to me goes the opposite direction to what is it. The world of Star Trek to me is about the triumph of humanity and its betterment rather than pew pew laser beams. Yes there are battles and action sequences liberally sprinkled throughout the canon. Heck my favourite Captain is from Peter David’s New Frontier series and Mackenzie Calhoun is a complete Kirk style cowboy Captain.

Ultimately, the intellectual property that is Star Trek has many aspects and for each there are fans. Could any company create a game that would satisfy all or even most parties? Is that even achievable in games based on an IP rather than a completely new world where there isn’t 40 or 50 years of fans idolising different aspects of it?

In the end did I lash out at Star Trek because I don’t feel that Cryptic has done the property properly, or is it because they’ve done it justice, but not in a way that suits my mental image of Star Trek? Only time will tell. I’m going to give it a try of course, how could I not? However if in the end it is all brawn and no brain, “Fire all Phasers” rather than “Open Channel” and gung ho at the expense of thought, it just won’t be Star Trek for me.

I want to boldly go, to seek out new life and new civilisations. Solve their problems, save them from the dangers that plague the universe and work towards a shining ideal first put forward decades ago. I don’t want to spam photons and go for coffee, no matter how much I can customize a race or ship.

I’m sure you wouldn’t…

I’m sure you all wouldn’t judge a book by it’s cover. I’m sure you all wouldn’t jump to conclusions on scant information.

I’m sure each and every one of you was raised right and isn’t going to cause a fuss over this.

According to Massively what you see in the link is the Star Trek Online Box art. Now being responsible mature people you won’t immediately read anything into it. Except we’re on the internet and that’s all bullshit and it’s time for nerd rage.

Specifically if people had a problem with the PCGamer Star Trek covers featuring vast … tracts of land on the girls, then what about this? Gun toting, fire raging, glorified battle with a Star Trek badge.

Suffice to say, diplomacy doesn’t seem to be an option.

We come in pwn, shoot to kill.

EDIT : Addition from a good friend

Doman: This is space, it shouldn't be "vast ... tracts of land" but rather "heavenly bodies"

MMO Blog Alliance Charity Drive 2009

The holidays are almost upon us again and this year the MMO Blogging Alliance wants to help ensure a good season for all! We’ve decided to pull together and encourage our readers to donate to those less fortunate. It has been a tough year for many families across the world and a little boost can go a long way. Please consider donating to one of the many charities that we recommend or one you select on your own. If you’re a blogger and would like to participate in our drive, it is as easy as writing a post, including this at the top, linking to the other posts, and picking a charity to donate to. Let’s show everyone that in 2009 the MMO community can make a positive difference in the world!

For Echoes of Nonsense, like some of the others, I’ve gone for Child’s Play. Honestly, every year I see it and every year I mean to do something but always let it slip me by. So this time around I’m getting behind Child’s Play and supporting them.

From the Child’s Play website:

Since 2003, over 100,000 gamers worldwide have banded together through Child’s Play, a community based charity grown and nurtured from the game culture and industry. Over 3.5 million dollars in donations of toys, games, books and cash for sick kids in children’s hospitals across North America and the world have been collected since our inception.

There’s a widget going up on the side to donate directly to Child’s Play (i.e. I shan’t be touching the monies) and for those of you out there who have your own near and dear charities, be sure to check the roll of honour below as there are many more charities covered, from Amnesty International to housing the homeless, breast cancer and lolcats needy kitties.

Roll of honour on the MBACD 2009, brainchild of Ferrel and supported by these great folks.

• Epic Slant 
• Bio Break 
• Incoming Pull 
• Spinksville 
• Psychochild 
• Stylish Corpse 
• Stabbed Up 
• MultiPlaying

This is our first year and if you’d like to know more or just chat about the initiative hop on over to the Epic Slant forum. Information on donating toys to Child’s Play can be found on their site.

Last Chance

Hey folks, just a quick poke in the eye here.

Today is the final day where you can buy the St. Jude Children's Research Hospital.2010 MMO Calendar

Information and Store here

If you want an epic piece of MMO art every month for a year, this is the last chance. Go now and grab it, 100% of proceeds go to charity.

Cryptic’s Star Trek

First, let’s do the easy bit. To apply for the Star Trek Online closed beta please visit this link. If you get in, remember who sent you and beat up a dev to get me in. Closed beta started October 22nd and Star Trek Online is slated for a first quarter 2010 release. Amazon pre-order link is somewhere below.

So. Star Trek. I was raised on Star Trek. Oh there were other shows, there was Doctor Who ingrained so deeply in my mind that I sleepwalked (slept walked?) to the source of the theme music once. There was Space 1999, Blake’s 7, UFO, Buck Rogers in the 25th Century. British 70s sci-fi, American sci-fi it didn’t matter. I was born and raised a geek. I love newer stuff. Stargate, Farscape, Odyssey 5, Battlestar Galactica and Babylon 5 all are huge to me. Star Trek though… despite the rubbish first three seasons per show, despite the ending of Enterprise or even worse, the Warp 10 episode (disowned from Canon) and despite what people may say about the latest movie, I love Star Trek. Shannon too is a life long Trekkie and we’ve both said to one another that love it or loathe it, we’re honour bound to at least trial Star Trek when it gets to Open Beta/Release (Though Cryptic, I can totally be bought by two closed beta keys if you want me to be nicer). With my geek cred established needlessly let’s get onto the real reason for this post.

KHHHHHHAAAAAAANNNNNNYYYYPPPPTTTIIIIIICCCC. (Why does the spell checker have no problem with that but dislikes “cred”?)

Let’s start with a previous blog entry, The Cryptic Model. I suggested that if “polish” is the watchword of Blizzard, then “custom” is that of Cryptic. Look at what they’ve done to date. I think people have died due to the amount of time they spent in the character creator (Joke, seriously). So far Cryptic has offered up two perks for Star Trek and like any good little nit picking fan boy I have an issue with both. First we have the perk given to the Lifetime subscribers of Champions Online, the mirror universe uniform. That makes no sense. Allow me to explain/Shut up and listen. The Terran Empire as seen in the first Mirror Universe episode, the one that established that evil twins have goatees and thus goateed people are evil, collapsed shortly after Kirk got his Kirk on. By the time of DS9 Earth and such had gone from almighty warmongering empire to a slave race to the Bajorans, Cardassians and Klingons. By the time of STO (some 20/30 years after Nemesis) the idea of wearing a Kirk era alternate universe evil empires outfit? Yeah I’m going to go and put a big fan boy NO on that. The second perk is even more unforgivable. Pre Order From Amazon and get a Borg Bridge officer. If I have to explain why that is wrong you never really got the Borg did you? This isn’t a Seven of Nine type issue where it’s a recently saved human (and generally getting de-borged is reserved for main cast) who happens to have some implants and such. No they are saying here have a Borg. I could come up with methods to justify that, like the individual “Hugh” Borg Lore was hanging out with or the Borg from Unity. In any event, despite any justification, you’d imagine they’d be a rarity as opposed to every Tom, Dick and Harry Kim who pre-orders.

Moving onwards we have further complaints. We’ll swing the bat at Cryptic first and then back to the game. Star Trek Online is being based on the Champions engine. Sure this means that development time has been cut, they already have the engine and tools and whatnot. Star Trek thus will be out in the first part of 2010. February if Amazon is to be believed. That seems rushed to me, terribly so. Further to my complaints, I foresee the C-Store making an appearance in Star Trek. I’ll have to wait and see to complain properly about that one.

At this point in the entry I was geared up for further bile and ranting. However I think I will leave it here for now and save that for another day. Suffice to say, the ship list does not please the Ardy. Instead I will end with one or two positives.

While I don’t necessarily agree with the view of the Klingons being presented, I admit that it is a good move to have an iconic pvp based race. Klingons love to fight and it can even be another Klingon. Also the progression and some of the ships interest me. Still, with the game only going into beta, a lot can change. Let’s hope the needs of the many are satisfied by what Cryptic is attempting.

Champions Online Free Weekend

With the rising of the Blood Moon, Champions is offering a Blood Moon Weekend to give people two days to try out the game and the Halloween Event.

Terry was right in the comments recently, I have been more full of hatedom than usual. You know, I gripe because I am interested. I never was one of the CoH players or pen and paper RPG players who on hearing of Champions squeed my pants off. Personally I didn’t get it and to a degree I still don’t.

However I have told a few people (though I may have neglected to blog it, so here you are) that I always thought I could have fun in Champions. I loved the look of the Force set. I thought tunnelling was cute. I’m going to try make the Robo-Buddy. All these things hold true despite complaints about the store, complaints about the game at large or anything else.

I’m going to be patching up (provided it isn’t an insanely huge patch) and creating a few characters. As Syp pointed a while back, saving the costume you make is a good move as it saves everything and makes for easy loading at a later date. I don’t think I ever will pick up Champions full time because there’s just other things out there that I want to play and the people I enjoy playing with aren’t jumping ship entirely just yet. Even so, if you’re free this weekend feel free to poke me on my Twitter or in Champions. @Ardua or http://twitter.com/Ardua

That all said, I stand by my fan boyish Trekkie based nerdrage. Cryptic gets a blasting for Star Trek Online later on. Nitpicks incoming!

C(ash cow)-Store

Sorry for the delay folks. Blame The SCP Foundation for my absence lately. I just can’t get enough of it.

Anyway as I am sure almost everyone knows, the Champions Online C-Store is now live. In it you can get such things as a complete Character Retcon (1000pts), Four additional Character slots (1200pts), Additional costume slots (400pts per two slots), Character Rename (280pts) then various emblems, outfits, vanity pets and so on.

Now those Cryptic points are roughly similar to Turbine Points. We’ll come back to that. The current exchange rate (as though to imply it can be changed later) Cryptic Points stands as shown here. It is at this point that I must point out quite clearly to one and all that City Of Heroes also has micro transactions.

City of Heroes lets you buy

• Character slots for a server up to a maximum of 36 slots on one server (1, 2 or 5 at iirc $5, $10 and $20)
• Server Transfers
• Respecs
• Character Rename
• Super Boosters

The Super Boosters are $10 each and you have such varied ones as the Good Vs Evil item pack (from the GvE edition of the game), Wedding Pack, Mac Item Pack, Cyborg Booster, Magic Booster and Super Science booster. Of all of them, only the Wedding pack is entirely cosmetic, with new outfits and emotes. The last three bring outfit pieces, emotes and powers. Good Vs Evil and Mac Pack have costumes and a new power.

Basically $10 buys you a fair bit of kit in CoH. Shannon wants me to get the Magic pack when I can because she adores one of the coats in it and I have to admit, the Fortune power is very handy to have but by no means game breaking. I personally have been eyeing up the Mac Pack, not for the mission teleporter power but the Valkyrie armour which looks gorgeous. Despite there being costume sets to buy and emotes only available to those who have shelled out cash the booster packs are perfectly acceptable to me for two reasons. Firstly (and I wish I had the time to ferret out a link to source the assertion) the Wedding pack sales directly accelerated work on the issue that followed it thanks to the cash injection. Hey, they give us fun stuff that we may want but don’t need and if it gives them a leg up? What’s not to love? Secondly, there are new pieces added to the game constantly. There are more temp powers than I’ve ever had knocking around the game. I may not be able to juggle electricity or drink a super serum for a costume change, but I eventually got my own costume change emotes.

$10 in CO doesn’t buy you anything. You have to purchase in increments. So the nearest band is $12.50 which gets you 1000 points and that’s just enough for a full RetCon in Champions. $12.50 to rebuild your character. City of Heroes also has Respecs for sale. Respecs in City of Heroes let you repick every power from your primary and secondary from the first level, entirely changing the pools you may have had and also are a handy way to sell off or remove enhancements and slotting that you may want elsewhere. You cannot, unlike the RetCon, change your primary and secondary. However as I write this I have 51 months worth of Veteran badges and Issue 16 recently launched. I personally tend not to respec and five years on from launch massive sudden nerfs to powers in CoH are rare. As a result I have Four veteran respecs (9 months, 21, 33 and 45 months), one new issue “freespec” and on most of my characters I have my three possible reward respecs from the trial. The trial takes about two hours and at the end, wahey respec and badge. If for some reason I managed to burn through those 8, I still do not have to shell out cash, there are Respec recipes on the in game market (though they cost a pretty penny).

Slots are also an issue. Four more character slots in Champions (to bring you to a total of 12) costs $18.75 (1500 pts) if you buy the two smaller instalments or $25 (2000pts) if you want to buy a few more things. Five slots in City of Heroes is $20 and you get a new character slot for every 12 months you’ve played the game, on top of the 12 you already had from City of Heroes (originally it launched with 8 but 12 became the standard after CoV) and the two they gave out if you were around for the launch of slots. You can on a single server in City of Heroes have 36 slots. Sure Champions is brand new and sure it doesn’t have servers, relying instead on the instances system but … it’s not like Cryptic didn’t know that hero games breed altwhores. It’s not like they didn’t give out Freespecs in CoH or didn’t have an easy and enjoyable respec system. Sure I suppose the ability to have a full retcon, rebuilding your character from the ground up and having entirely different powers, shouldn’t be cheap or easy. There’s a difference though between “not cheap and easy” and “screw the customer for cash”.

As people will continue to compare the two games (me especially) keep in mind that Cryptic did make them both. Champions should have been City of Heroes Mk 2.Awesome. They had the time and experience with CoH to show them what did and did not work, what does and does not piss off the fan base and finally how to have fans hand over cash with a grin. I’ve never heard anyone bemoan “having” to buy a super booster. Heck if you decide to play City of Heroes, buy the Architect edition, you get a free super booster with it. Right now Champions is punishing its players and the pricing is insulting in some cases and idiotic in others. Really though, it’s just retail. You’ll almost always have points left over and they’ll tease you with more bits and pieces. You’ll always need to buy just a few more to fit everything if you don’t shell out more than you need initially.

Though for the close we’ll go back to the Turbine Points like I promised. I played some DDO with Sareini over the weekend and I earned my first Turbine points which when I have enough I can use instead of cash to buy anything in the DDO store. Now obviously I know it’ll be a grind if I want anything in particular. The cash option is just the faster, easier but ultimately costly option. If I want it NAO I pay money. Champions to my recollection is supposed to have the same system. However Sareini tells me that there are to her knowledge at the moment no missions in the game that reward C-Points because well… it’s broken. Also Cryptics Daeke had this to say.

I agree with Syp in that CO really shouldn’t be charging for costumes and such when they haven’t yet surpassed their only competitor. If nothing else, charging money for Halloween outfits before Halloween? Whose bright idea was that?

Two notes I'm adding after the fact. First I will put in ParagonWiki links for people soon. Second, while I want clarification on the extra costume slot item in the C-store, it is the one thing Shannon would kill for in CoH