Veteran's Day: Pirates of the Burning Sea FREE For 6 Months

While Flying Labs Software did not make this announcement on veteran's day, I wanted to talk about it:

Military personnel that can verify their status through a .mil e-mail address will be able to partake in an interesting promotion announced by Flying Lab Software this week. The promotion offers six months of Pirates of the Burning Sea to military personnel, however, in order to continue playing after the free six months you will still have to purchase a copy of the game.

I've run the full gambit of decisions on Pirates of the Burning Seas. From almost joining their core audience as a player community liaison to the announcement of SOE publishing the game crushing my dreams, eventually I decided to skip the game's launch.

It turned out that the launch did not go so well and the game was quickly written off as a niche "failure". In my opinion, the game is right where I anticipated, a niche game with a niche audience. Fortunately, this free offer for military members gives me a proper 6 months to evaluate the game (and at $7 for a copy of the game, I may be tempted to just take the plunge down the road).

I started my journey into the game last night. The download and setup was a breeze, but that is a requirement for me these days. Any hiccups at that stage and I tend to dump any free game in a heartbeat.

Character creation was pretty awesome and I feel I've created a unique French Naval Officer, named Captain Heartless Gamer. With a Captain, a ship, and the tutorial complete, I set out for some adventures. The game can really be broken down into four areas: ships, avatars, economy, and PvP.

As I only played for an hour or so, I've only experienced ship and avatar combat. Ship combat is pretty solid and enjoyable. It can be slow at times, but I suspect it will get better as my ship gets better. Avatar combat is a cheap attempt to introduce a little classic diku-inspired MMO into PotBS. It works, but I wouldn't hold it up as a strong point.

At the end of the day, I'm playing for the open seas, the economy, and eventually some PvP. Good thing I have six months to feel the situation out!

The End WAR

Disheartening news has leaked out that a chunk of the recent EA job cutting spree has hit EA Mythic hard:

Mythic laid off 80 people today, which is about 40% of the company and responsible for 90% of the content. According to a friend of mine who left before this happened, they're putting Warhammer into "maintenance mode."

I am not sure if there's been an official announcement, but my friend said that I was free to mention it, because it's surprising it's not out already. (I actually knew about it on Friday but not the numbers.)

There is no hiding it. Many of us (me included) were wrong about WAR. The game has floundered since launch and performed misstep after misstep the entire way. Its only logical that the game's development would be scaled back.

The laundry list of canceled, dieing, or dead MMOGs at the feet of EA is legendary: Earth and Beyond, Motor City Online, The Sims Online, Ultima Online's sequals, etc. It makes one wonder how much the EA merger affected the Mythic office.

Currently, I am part of a company undergoing a similar assimilation by a much larger company and player in our industry. Even with a positive attitude overall in the office, constant commentary from customers about the merger and half-assed quotes from officers of the company easily put people on edge. An environment of mistrust is being born and people rightfully question whether project A or B will exist next week.

In the case of Myhic merging with EA, it should have resulted in a better game. More resources, more manpower, and probably more marketing. However, if the merger created any doubts about the direction of the project, more of everything would have been needed just to keep the ship sailing straight, effectively nullifying any positive gains.

The question now is whether Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning is going to be around much longer. Will EA cancel a game that may be costing too much to keep alive or will they dramatically change the way it is managed? Maybe to a point where the game has no chance to do anything other than float on by for a another year before being canceled.

Is there any truth into the "EA = poison" mythos that has been created around MMOG projects they've acquired? Do we need to fear for Star Wars: The Old Republic? IMHO, yes.

This Is Why The Packers Are Losing Games

The Green Bay Packers lost to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers yesterday. They handed one of the worst teams in the NFL a win. The root cause is not lack of talent on the team, but a management and coaching issue. This problem is highlighted by the following:

Tampa, Nov 9 (THAINDIAN NEWS) The Green Bay Packers have put the injured Jason Spitz on reserve and instead filled the spot with wide receiver Biren Ealy according to a reliable source.

With the worst offensive line in NFL history and probably one of the best receiving corps, Packers management has decided to replace an injured offensive lineman with a god damned wide receiver. Ted Thompson and Mike McCarthy need to go. NOW!

Tempest in a Teacup: Modern Warfare 2

Ars Technica is running an article about the trials and tribulations of upcoming military-shooter, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2. In the article, they provide plenty of quotes from the game's developers showing some blatant disrespect for the PC version of the game:

We thought the lack of dedicated servers was bad, but now we can add the lack of console commands, the inability to have a say in who hosts the game, a lengthy pause while the game migrates to a new host if the currently selected host quits, no leaning, no option to record matches, and no way to kick or block trouble players, hackers, or cheaters.

You have to wonder if there are any actual PC gamers working at Infinity Ward, as it will be a challenge to find any member of the PC gaming community that will stand up for any of these omissions, not to mention all of them bundled together. At launch, this will be one of the most locked-down, inflexible, and gamer-unfriendly game ever created.

While the above quote is a bit sensationalist, it does illustrate how frustrated some of the core audience for the CoD franchise have become, particularly on the PC.

Personally, I don't feel the loss of dedicated servers or a restriction to 9vs9 is all that horrible. In the current Modern Warfare game, any game above 9vs9 feels overcrowded or is a blatant cheat server designed to unlock accomplishments and/or gain levels. Secondly, its almost impossible to find two servers running the same rulesets these days. No snipers here, no perks there, this perk not allowed, no airstrikes, etc. It all gets fairly annoying when a player just wants to play the game.

Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare 2 (MW2) is not a strict or heavily-leaning PC title. I have no qualms with it being "consolized" in the PC version. We would be having a different discussion if this was Team Fortress 2, a game BORN from the PC platform, and heavily dependent on a customized experience on each server. Modern Warfare 1 was big on the PC, but it truly took over the consoles. It is not surprising to see where Infinity Ward is basing their design.

With that said, IW should accept the fact that the PC gaming industry will probably reflect the "consolization" in their reviews. For example, Borderlands has some fairly obvious console leftovers in the PC version, but its still a good game and uses the same sort of Peer2Peer multiplayer hosting as MW2 will. Most reviews docked Borderlands on the PC for the console leftovers, as they should, but not because they were mad about it!

There's a quote in the Ars Technica comments section that describes the situation best:

This is a tempest in a teacup. Either buy the game or don't. This is not the end of PC gaming as we know it.

My best suggestion is for PC gamers to forget that this is part of the Call of Duty brand. It was originally meant to be called Modern Warfare 2, a somewhat separate product from the Call of Duty series. Move on if dedicated servers and other features are a must. Plenty of PC gamers will do fine without them and play the game without you.

NOTE: IWNet is an interesting move towards Peer2Peer hosting for such a MAJOR multiplayer game release.

WTF2

What the Favre!

Once upon a time I would have cheered when Favre won a game, but not today. Fortunately, I didn't get to watch this abomination of a game (the highlights were enough to make me break something).