REVIEW: 'EverQuest', 'Warcraft' Polished
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If my experiences with two new massively multiplayer online role-playing games have taught me one thing, it's that if I really wanted, I'd never have to interact face-to-face with another person again. I have all the friends and enemies I can handle thanks to "EverQuest II" and "World of Warcraft."
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An update to Age of Empires from MacSoft smooths gameplay with improved networking support and other enhancements.
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With meticulous attention to detail and a never-ending commitment to goosing the gameplay, Bungie Studios designers tweak their hotly anticipated title to perfection.
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Blizzard Entertainment Inc.'s World of Warcraft dominates the online computer gaming market, but is facing tough new competition from Turbine Inc. of Westwood.
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Tycho:  When I started reading articles about Senator Brownback's bill - the one that would require that the ESRB play through games in their entirety - I expected to agree with it in principle, but take issue with its execution.  The shrill phase of the site, where I would don armor and ride under the aegis of the true gamer no matter how mild the incentive, now rests in the reliquary with Xbox Controller Jokes and Jabs At User Friendly.  I had chosen a singularly poor moment to become reasonable.  Upon further examination, the Senator's plan (which I think may be rightly called a machination) is the sort of thing one might forge in the fires of Mount Doom.
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More nudity, more raunch, more sex scenes fill new &quot;Uncut&quot; version of VU&#39;s risquÃ© college adventure. Is it even possible to make Leisure Suit Larry: Magna Cum Laude--a video game characterized by nothing
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Rival wiki smackdown slated on World of Warcraft Comments Happy Friday, everyone! It's time for another round of comments.â¦
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Gabe: I just have some random stuff to share here.***UPDATE***Looks like we got bumped to 2/12 because of a Magic tournament.Pokemon League night is next Tuesday at the Comic Stop. Matches start at six pm, but you can show up a little early if you'd like to trade cards. As always new players are welcome, just bring a starter deck. It's also a good idea to register at Go-Pokemon.com and bring your POP ID. A reader wrote in today to tell me that he was doing the New York Sun crossword puzzle for January 30th and noticed this clue for 12 down:  "Tycho's pal in the webcomic 'Penny Arcade' (4 letters)." That's totally awesome. I'm sure the Force Unleashed will be fine. The time period around the original trilogy is just getting so crowded. Now Vader has a secret apprentice? I mean, it makes sense canonically to me. The Emperor had Mara Jade out there doing his dirty work. It's not unreasonable to think Vader had a similar arrangement. Also the very nature of Sith rule makes covering your ass a necessity. The hook for the game is fine and I don't mind the 3rd person action stuff. There are a few games I'd much rather see them make though. The fact that they have not made a sequel to Republic Commando is fucking criminal. That's not a joke either. I mean that someone over there should be put in jail for the rest of their life. RepCom was an incredible squad based shooter, and unlike most games in that genre it was packed with awesome characters. This games deserves a next gen sequel. The other game that needs a next gen installment is Tie Fighter. Seriously that game came out in 1994 and it's one of the best space shooters ever. And for fucks sake stop setting things during the movies. There's nearly sixty years worth of incredible content (minus the dark nest series) extending out past Return of the Jedi. You don't have to keep trying to cram stories into the same 20 year period. They're milking so much content out of that period that eventually we'll be playing a game as Luke where the goal is to repair vaporators on the south ridge. Hurry up you've only got 'till mid day!Rez is available on Xbox Live now. It's one of the best games ever made.   The most popular piece of clothing we've ever made, AKA The Black Mantle is back in stock. It's joined by its polar opposite, the Luminous Vestments. I have a feeling both will be sold out before I finish typing this.   -Gabe out
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Tycho:  We never sit down with the firm intention of making another Bioshock comic - indeed, we intend the opposite - but somehow Bioshock comics continue to be written.  One day, science will pierce these mysteries.  Until then, you'll simply have to endure more strips regarding interactive storytelling's electronic opus.  My recovery from this weekend's rigors would be quite accelerated if I were not up until two or more every night, which is to say morning, hacking and slashing my way through the new releases like some malarial jungle guide.  I put Bioshock to bed last night, and theoretically this should be cause for joy, but I suppose it's like finishing a pie.  There is a whiff of accomplishment, semisweet - but the pie is gone.  Without pause, I slapped the input stud on the video switcher before the final cinema faded to black.  Hurling the gamepad into a knitting basket, I dug deep into the faultlines of the couch, producing a wiimote/nunchuk pair.  I've now played enough of Metroid Prime 3 to know that they've washed the filth of Red Steel completely from the system.  For awhile, I was doing that thing we sometimes do, playing until "the next savepoint," which so frequently becomes "until the savepoint after that," only to meld seamlessly into "until I can no longer see."  They've been spinning the tumbler at Retro for awhile on this one, trying to define first person on Nintendo's weird little chimera, and they've drilled down with enough diligence to find it.  No doubt some measure of the enthusiasm directed toward the game is due to the fact that people are actually using their Wii again, but that shouldn't diminish what they've done.    People have seen Corruption for a couple years, now, builds that bubbled up at different press events, and it's been slightly different each time.  I think they've moved some of the interactions since I last played it - things that were mapped to the nunchuck's gyro before are now handled by the wiimote's pointing device, and I understand why.  Gestures are a very immersive, intuitive means of interaction, but when they fail (or when they fail to express us correctly) they are Goddamned infuriating.  In a case when your hand is actually "present" in the simulation - such as when your left hand is pulling, then twisting, then pushing forward - those motions need to be as authentic as possible.  They must have chosen the perfect translation of the pointing device over the more "correct" left hand interaction.  It creates situations where you are using a different hand than your character, but because the motion is really one to one it still feels pretty good.    That's the long way of saying what you could learn in five minutes, sitting in front of it.  This entire exercise has only stoked my ardor.  It is my intention to begin playing this game at ten, and continue doing so until light begins to creep under the curtains.
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Arianne is a multiplayer online engine to develop turn based and real time games providing a simple way of creating the game server rules and clients like Stendhal. Marauroa, our server, uses Java and MySQL for hosting dozens of players on a solo host.   Mr and Mrs Yeti have a sweet little ice cave below Semos Mountain. Be like Mr Yeti, keep your loved one sweet, with a red rose from Fleur in Kirdneh. While you're there, why not visit the museum, drink in the inn, go to the bank or even buy a house!  Perhaps your loved one likes cute cuddly animals? Then take a stroll around the farm east of Semos. It's full of cute piglets, goats, cows and little tiny mice.  Alone for Valentines? Go kill some dwarves! That'll help! The orcs in ados abandoned keep want to be rid of the mountain dwarves, so you'd even be doing them a favour. Perhaps retail therapy is what you need, in which case the Orcs in the keep can sell you good quality armor. Some say there's even better stuff deeper in the keep.  Enough of the blood and guts and back to a love story. Princess Esclara on Amazon island has locked up an ugly barbarian - and he wants to know why! She's not too happy either - are there secret feelings between them? Ok, so it's not quite Romeo and Juliet...  Lastly on the love theme, a gentle reminder that we want to help any new people who join our world. Hayunn Naratha has been employed as full time tutor of anyone new, which should help a lot, but remember if you do see anyone looking lost - help them! It's what makes the world go round.
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Dragon Quest Heroes: Rocket Slime is an utterly charming action/role-playing game whereas combat in Defcon is slow, eerie and disquieting.
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Now that the new World of Warcraft expansion is upon us, it's time to consider the extras that are yet to come. How about smokin' cybersex, more elves than you can shake a Quidditch broom at, and humanoid tapirs? Commentary by Lore SjÃ¶berg.
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The Cartoon Network is developing a "massively" multiplayer online game in the vein of "World of Warcraft" and "EverQuest" for kids 6 to 14.
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From EverQuest to Tabula Rasa, MMOs get ready to throw parties for players. Get the lowdown on Frostfell, Feast of Winterveil and other in-world events.
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I had an absolute blast drawing the recent World of Warcraft series. Not just because I&#8217;m re-hooked on the game and it was a wonderful outlet for that pent-up-excitement, but because it was so fun to draw. I know it&#8217;s my strip, and I can draw whatever I want, but let&#8217;s be honest for a moment. [...]
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An anonymous essay criticizing video game publisher Electronic Arts is unleashing a torrent of complaints about work practices in the game world. [Missing Links]
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Tycho:  As suggested by Gabriel's recent communique, pokemania is not only going strong but has burst, like some foul canker, and the infection has spread.  It's true that I have built a so-called "Leaf Deck," but this is because I was fairly certain they would beat me up if I didn't.  Now he's hauling in his case of Next Quest figurines each day, as I myself once hauled a tacklebox of Necrons, only I need to stress that it was more awesome when I was doing it, because Necrons are unkillable harvesters of flesh and not some kind of weird fox or living scarf.  It's absolutely fucked that I have spent almost fourteen years trying to reveal the subtle glories of table gaming, only to be cast down time and time again.  However wise my counsel, it apparently lacked that crucial munchkin component.    After I completed Half-Life 2: Episode Two - perfectly acceptable entertainment, but nowhere near the revolutions found elsewhere on the same platter - I started to wonder how they would deliver the third episode to the same platform in the next year or so.  I doubt they'll have another four games to accompany it, but who knows:  they're a bizarre company where extraordinary things happen.  Left 4 Dead, Counter-Strike, Day of Defeat, and Episode 3 might look pretty nice on there together.  On the PC, of course, one simply clicks a couple times to get whatever they want, and then leverages Valve's fairly incredible community implementation to get things done.  You could accomplish all of this using only the tip of your nose.      On the Playstation 3, even with Valve's distaste for native development, there's already several precedents for direct delivery of individual titles.  On the 360, where Arcade is Microsoft's only concept for delivering titles in their entirety, the hundred and fifty meg limit falls hard around some titles, hemming them in.  But there's a weird (read: psychotic) eyelet where where larger-form product can escape: as content drops for retail titles.  I was surprised that there was no option for this in The Orange Box itself.  Now that Valve is in a position to write a game once and then compile it to different platforms, a retail release - called "Steam," and including two or three catalog titles - could be delivered as an anchor for their considerable franchise power almost in  perpetuity.  After years of fairly positive digital delivery experiences through Steam, I have to say that I found purchasing a Valve product in a retail context almost unpleasant - and not just because it entails hauling around my considerable bulk.  Retail has been a raw deal for a long time now in developer terms, and I avoid it whenever possible.  I should solicit another piece by an insider here for the post, and I know just the guy.  When he breaks down the way royalties work in the industry, you'll be surprised it isn't just Electronic Arts that's left, selling Electronic Arts games in EA branded stores.