Twenty Sided

By Shamus Posted Sunday Jun 15, 2008

Filed under: Random 68 comments

I was on the phone the other day with a friend, who was explaining a bit about how leveling works in WoW. I just didn’t get how “the game begins at level 70”, since that’s when you hit max level.

I was still trying to wrap my head around it when I asked, “So you still keep ‘growing’ in power even after you hit max level?”

He replied, “Oh yeah. If you just ran into Karazhan as soon as you ding 70, you’d get completely pwned. You have to work your way-“

“Hang on a second”, I stopped him, “Did you just say ‘pwned’?”

“Yeah I did.”

“I’m sorry. But you gotta put a quarter in the dork jar.”

This was the first time I’ve heard the word used conversationally, although I’ve seen it written a thousand times.

Language is, of course, changing all the time. Just during my teenage years several words were hijacked by teenagers: Cool, Wicked, Radical, Awesome. All of them were stripped of their original meanings and repurposed as synonyms for “something I like or which I find interesting”.

Pwned is an interesting one. (Doesn’t it look funny to properly capitalize it and punctuate around the word like that?) A few years ago people started using “owned” to mean “defeated”. Probably this arose from something like, “He owns your ass”, giving the idea that not only did the other person win, but they so fully dominated that the loser was helpless. That phrase was shortened to simply “owned” and then morphed into “pwned”, a typo of the same which rose up when 1337speak was all the rage, and which is now mostly used ironically.

I’m only 36, so I don’t quite have enough time as an adult to properly judge, but it seems like language is becoming more volatile due to the internet. Even ignoring the onslaught of new technology-related words, it seems like English is morphing faster than it did when I was younger. Words are coming and going faster and shifting their meanings more abruptly. Maybe I’m just a little less malleable than I used to be, and so the changes seem swifter, I’m not sure. Maybe someone closer to fifty can appraise this and compare things to how they’ve been over the last thirty years.

And now apparently people walk around saying the word pwned in day-to-day speech.

What a bunch of llamas.

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.

 CD KeysPrevious Post

Next PostMMO's and Meeting Up 

68 comments

About the Comics

By Shamus Posted Friday Jun 13, 2008

Filed under: Projects 20 comments

 Changing ThemesPrevious Post

Next PostWoW: LFG 

Several people are nudging me, wondering what happened to the comics. I can’t say much just yet, but I can share the following trivia:

I am still making comics.
They will eventually appear. Probably twice weekly.
They will represent a little more work than I’ve been putting into the slapdash ones I’ve had on the site over the last few weeks, which means they will hopefully have more funny.
This is all loosely related to my sudden change of heart in regards to playing MMO’s.
I can’t say more. Hang tight and give it a few weeks.
My blatherings here will continue, unimpeded.
The female avatars in Guild Wars are very pretty. That doesn’t have anything to do with this list but I just thought it was important to point that out.

Right. Back to work.

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.

 Changing ThemesPrevious Post

Next PostWoW: LFG 

20 comments

Hellgate: London
Final Thoughts

By Shamus Posted Friday Jun 13, 2008

Filed under: Game Reviews 22 comments

 Hellgate:London
Autopsy, Part 4Previous Post

Next PostHellgate:London
Uninstall 

At the outset of this series I wanted to know why Diablo II was digital crack, and HGL – a product of the same group of people – was a chore.

An addictive game is usually a collection of smaller activities, goals, or meta-games for the player to pursue. In an RPG we might have things like:

Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Hellgate: London
Final Thoughts”

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.

 Hellgate:London
Autopsy, Part 4Previous Post

Next PostHellgate:London
Uninstall 

22 comments

Guild Wars

By Shamus Posted Thursday Jun 12, 2008

Filed under: Personal 43 comments

 "Zap"Previous Post

Next PostThe Beginning of The End 

A friend loaned me his Guild Wars account. (And now that I think of it, maybe this violates the TOS. In which case I purchased a completely new Guild Wars account and I have no friends.)

I’ll be trying it out tonight. I do have to be very careful with these games. I don’t talk about it here much, but aside from my day job and the hours I spend writing the endlessly spooling miles of text on this site, I’m also a Dad and I have to make sure I do Dad stuff regularly so my kids don’t grow up while I’m not looking.

So, this will be my first real MMO since about 2001. We’ll see how it goes.

UPDATE: Not everyone with “Shamus” in their name is me, but everyone that’s me has “Shamus” in their name.

This game looks fantastic. It’s a good thing, since I’m wandering around, lost and confused, but greatly enjoying the scenery.

You can click on someone’s name to whisper to them. This game REALLY needs to make it just as easy to mute people. It only takes a few idiots to really make a hash of the chat window.

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.

 "Zap"Previous Post

Next PostThe Beginning of The End 

43 comments

Hellgate:London
Autopsy, Part 4

By Shamus Posted Thursday Jun 12, 2008

Filed under: Game Reviews 36 comments

 Hellgate:London
Autopsy, Part 3Previous Post

Next PostHellgate: London
Final Thoughts 

Hellgate week plods ever onward. This is the last of these grim reviews. This has not been a pleasant experience, cataloging this long list of failures. I feel like a vulture that perches at the foot of your deathbed and then wearies you with an extended account of everything you did wrong in life. This is a joyless task, although I do have a purpose in mind.

Tomorrow I’ll have something more positive about the game.

Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Hellgate:London
Autopsy, Part 4″

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.

 Hellgate:London
Autopsy, Part 3Previous Post

Next PostHellgate: London
Final Thoughts 

36 comments

Hellgate:London
Autopsy, Part 3

By Shamus Posted Wednesday Jun 11, 2008

Filed under: Game Reviews 32 comments

 Hellgate:London
Autopsy Part 2Previous Post

Next PostHellgate:London
Autopsy, Part 4 

This post focuses on some of the details of the crafting system, which is largely undocumented. What I have here is just my guesswork on the matter. I’m sure there are inaccuracies in it. Also note that I’ve only played the “marksman” class, so I don’t know how things are for the other classes in the game.

Looting

When describing the addictive pull of Diablo II, one person said, “You keep playing because you can’t shake this feeling that there just has to be a better sword out there, somewhere.” Killing monsters in search of loot gives much the same thrill people get from those scratch-off lottery tickets, or slot machines: The next one might be a winner. Each monster is a Pià±ata, just waiting for you to knock him open and see what goodies he has, and there’s always a chance you might hit the jackpot and get something really good.

Except, in this game the crafting system makes the search for loot largely irrelevant. There are level restrictions on items. To use a weapon of awesomeness factor X you must be at least level Y. If your weapon is under this limit, you can take it over to the nano forge and upgrade it. (I’m pretty sure it won’t let you upgrade the weapon if doing so would make the weapon unusable for you.) So, at any time you can be reasonably sure that you’ve got nearly the best weapon you’re allowed to wield.

The whole “there’s got to be a better sword”, thing never enters into it, because if you did find something better, you probably wouldn’t be allowed to equip it.

Suggestion: It was a bold move to introduce a crafting / upgrading system that negates the need for treasure hunting – which was the biggest draw for Diablo II over the years. It was either bold, or foolish. The crafting and upgrading had better be really compelling if they’re going to supplant treasure hunting as the focus of the game. Speaking of which…

Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Hellgate:London
Autopsy, Part 3″

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.

 Hellgate:London
Autopsy Part 2Previous Post

Next PostHellgate:London
Autopsy, Part 4 

32 comments

A Peek Inside Flagship

By Shamus Posted Wednesday Jun 11, 2008

Filed under: Links 16 comments

 ImpulsePrevious Post

Next PostWorld of Warcraft:
Counterpoint 

In the comments on yesterday’s post on Hellgate, Gahaz posted a link to this, which is a post from one of the last remaining programmers working on Hellgate. It is, as others have said, a depressing read.

The worst part is that he’s obviously painfully aware of the problems with Hellgate, but powerless to fix them. There would be hope for the project if it were still fully staffed, and they just needed a nudge from the fans to focus their efforts in the right place. But as it stands, it looks like the project is now on a skeleton crew and everyone else has jumped to other projects. They say that success has a thousand fathers, and failure is an orphan. That seems to be the case here.

It’s a shame because the more I look at things, the more it looks like Hellgate could have gone on to have some degree of success. People like the idea. They like the people behind it. They want to love the game. Lots of MMO games (which Hellgate sort of is) had rough releases and went on to fix the bugs and do well in the end. Hellgate isn’t getting that chance. When the game failed to become a cash cow, the staff was cut and the thing has been left to limp along until it drops dead.

It has to be rough for the people that left. They originally made an incredibly successful game. (Diablo II) Then their company (Blizzard) was bought out. I’ve never learned why, but something about the buyout made them unhappy enough to jump ship and form their own company. They started with a big vision, and worked away at it until they went broke. They were then forced to sell all of their efforts so far to EA in order to secure the backing to finish the thing. They avoided working for Vivendi Games, but in the end wound up working for a corporate monolith anyway, and this time it owned five years of their work. The game was released before it was ready – either because they were too slow or EA was too impatient, I’m not going to judge that one – and earned a quiet “meh” from fans. The staff was cut, many quit, and the dream ended.

I’m going to post the rest of my series of Hellgate, although it feels like beating a dead horse now.

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.

 ImpulsePrevious Post

Next PostWorld of Warcraft:
Counterpoint 

16 comments

OLDER POSTS



From The Archives: