World of Warcraft Cross-Realm Dungeons

World of Warcrafthas decided that cross-realm PvP battlegrounds were not enough and have gone ahead and added cross-realm PvE dungeon groups.

In the upcoming content patch, a new dungeon system will be added that will take the place of the current Looking For Group system. This will offer great new benefits to both premade and randomly created groups, including:

* Cross-Realm Instances/Grouping
* Instance Teleporting
* Daily Random Dungeons
* Group Disenchanting

Personally, this is something I wanted in WoW a long time ago. The player group that will benefit the most from this change will be those behind the curve, who are still doing the dungeons the majority long ago left behind. As I joined late in the party on The Burning Crusade, I did very few dungeons in Outlands as there was never a group doing the ones I had quests in.

This is another sign that Blizzard knows what they are doing with WoW as a whole. They may have fallen down from time to time with class changes (they are fairly overzealous in that area), but overall Blizzard has managed the WoW juggernaut well.

Every announcement out of WoW entices me to go back. Unfortunately, I just don't have the time (maybe that is fortunate :P ).

Update: 31 Oct 2009 - Edited title (world was spelled wrong).

The Gathering Shipping

Greetings from Amazon.com.

We thought you'd like to know that we shipped your items, and that this completes your order. Your order is being shipped and cannot be changed by you or by our customer service department.

The following items have been shipped to you by Amazon.com:

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Qty Item Price Shipped Subtotal

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Amazon.com items (Sold by Amazon.com, LLC):

1 The Gathering Storm (Wheel... $14.00 1 $14.00

Shipped via USPS

FINALLY, the Wheel of Time series is concluding (this is book 1 of 3 of the last 3 that will be released). Yay, go fantasy!

Update: 30 Oct 2009 - It has arrived (now I need to catch up on books 4-11)

Olivia Munn Hates Flying

I once hated Twitter. I now love it. I get to find out cute little things like Olivia Munn (@oliviamunn) having a fear of flying:

United Death Flight 6876 out of State College, Pennsylvania is now departing. Dear mother of God... Hail Mary full of Grace... Fuck me.

Soleil Moon Frye aka Punky Brewster. RT@fedbizop Who do you want to play U in the story of your life?

If I dont make it, tell my mama not to cry. tell her i was happy, made fun of fat people, told lots of racist jokes and LIVED!

My last tweet will read "Is it cool if there arent wings?" RT @Mikey_Vega peggy sue, peggy sue. A pretty, pretty, pretty, pretty peggy sue..

Don't know who Olvia Munn is? Only the hottest geek gaming chick of them all and star of Attach of the Show on G4 TV.

The only thing that concerns me is that it is not a verified person on Twitter so could just be a twitter hoax :P Oh well, hot chick pic FTW!


UPDATE: She lived.

oliviamunn In NY safe! Yeah bitches!!! Liv Munny in the hiz-ouse!... Fuck I just said "hiz-ouse" as a replacement for "house". Gotta kill myself. Damn.

Hulu to Start Charging in 2010 - A Sunday Morning Post

Sad news for fans of all things legally free on the Internet, Hulu officially to start charging for content in 2010:

Bad news if you like free stuff: In 2010, the popular ad-supported streaming video site Hulu will officially begin charging for content.

Let me preface this with: as a fan of Hulu, I would pay for some premium content. However, the vast majority of what is on Hulu is something I am already paying for on cable or can get for FREE over the open air waves. The ONLY edge Hulu has is the fact that it is free and on-demand (meaning I can watch what I want, when I want). Is that worth paying for? As I said, maybe, for some stuff, especially if I dump my overpriced monthly cable bill. I gladly pay for Netflix, which a similar argument can be made for.

A lot of people are stating they are just going back to their torrents. Seriously? People are going back to torrents? I highly doubt any torrenters (aka pirates) dumped their torrents for Hulu. Torrents are simple to get, often better quality, and don't come with advertisements. Hulu was there for those of us that didn't pirate, but still wanted quality free content while supporting the content developers in some way.

Come 2010, my wife and I have decided to dump our cable TV and go Internet only. Regardless of whether Hulu is free or not, quality FREE and LEGAL content is available in droves on the Internet. Its just a question of setting expectations that we may miss a few things here and there (at the same time we may discover a few things we've been missing).

Anyways, we have Netflix and I think that is where the problem is. Can Hulu convince anyone to pony up for yet another online-centric service? I think the answer is yes, especially if it works out to be SIGNIFICANTLY cheaper than my monthly cable bill.

Back to Hulu and the pirates, and lets get this post back towards game-related

I just don't buy either side here. Hulu claims to be losing millions, but all the evidence shows how successful their model is for advertisers. Not to mention Hulu giving rebirth to almost dead TV programs such as Its Always Sunny in Philadeplphia. Hulu just needs to leverage itself better and get paid for the power that it now yields.

Pirates claim they were using Hulu, which is just laughable.

We've seen this in the game sector as well. Pirates ALWAYS claim they just want a free preview or that games are too expensive. As this post from an iPhone game developer shows, its a lie.

Well, from this data we can conclude that 0% of pirates think the game is worth buying (which, by the way, is contrary to most of the forum posts we read from legit buyers).

To summarize: iPhone games are cheap and NONE of the pirates came back to buy the game after playing it hardcore.

My view on piracy and what content creators should do:

a) minimize its impact to their service (don't let pirated copies tag along on your online services, make support requests, etc.)

b) ignore it

And that's that for a Sunday morning post.

Reaction: How NOT to do Microtransactions

Cuppy posted a "how NOT to do Microtransactions" post and I felt my response was worth re-posting here:

I agree with a lot of what you said. However, I think you are taking micro too literally. A $20 (or even $50) transaction is MICRO in comparison of the whole revenue stream for a single game. That is where the term originated (not because the transactions were ever small couple'o'buckers).

Yes, there needs to be enough $1-$2 purchases, but if that is ALL you ever stick with, you are losing out on a TON of people willing to spend more. Raph made this point not too long ago and I agree 100% with what he said then (I just can't find the link).

My number one complaint with microtransaction games is that some are just god damn confusing. RoM, outside of a mount, was tiring to figure out and prevented me from ever spending money (I was always holding off thinking I would get X for free and pay for Z later). Also Free Realms didn't get any money from me because I was lost between figuring out if I just needed to pay a sub or just float for free and pay for tit and tat here and there. DDO is OK, but still confusing, especially considering a lot of what can be bought can be gotten for free and it isn't very clear.

Right now, I prefer Battlefield Heroes model, which is actually a dual currency system. Pay for the good stuff, like UNIQUE character customizations and non-game-balance-affecting boosts. While they have an in game currency (VP) that is earned via playing and allows you to purchase the BASICS like weapons and healing widgets.