Walk of Shame: Sony and IGE the morning after...

After a passionate night of dirty incestuous relations that the editors of Existential Worlds have deemed too illicit to depict here (for fear of FCC reprisal), Sony and IGE were allegedly seen sheepishly walking out of their love nest. The walk of shame had begun.

In a (not even remotely) surprising twist, Sony has joined forces with the IGE network, to (scam) provide users with a new blend of (horrible) excellent Sony service. Not only have they raised their prices to continue to provide (1.5th) third generation MMOs, and (embarrassingly bad) industry leading standards, they will now provide their customers with convenient methods of disposing of their hard earned wages.

Ahh, don't they look cute together? I wonder what their children will look like?

Slow News Week

It has been a very slow week in the gaming world from my standpoint, and I just couldn't rustle up the will power to invent a topic to discuss, so I just left well enough alone. Last night I hit level 70 on my warrior, Sunzu, and respecc'd deep protection to begin the instancing and raiding circut.

I have never had two raid ready characters before. I've posted in the past about how I lack the Alt fever that many players feel, and that I am enjoying the off-night fun of a totally different style of play. Ranged DPS on my Warlock and Melee tanking on my warrior. It is a perfect combo, and if I leveled either my priest or druid to 70 and had a healer, I would complete the trinity.

That being said, I am approaching uncharted territory. My guild is ramping up an alt Karazhan run on off-nights, which I assume will get underway within the next few weeks, and I will be raiding basically every night either on my main or my alt. Fortunately, Cyndre is basically done with Karazhan once I obtain my T4 helm, and I can take a break on Kara nights, though I can see the guild stopping as a whole once we get serious about Serpentshrine over the next month.

I love raiding, but I also need time off from it, in order to someday horde enough gold to buy my epic flying mount... on two characters...

Well I suppose we shall see how it goes, but the versatility I have now is amazing. I am LFG in guild and, my wife being a holy priest, we can basically form any group we want on the spot. Need DPS, no problem... need a tank, fine, I'll log over... Very nice situation to be in.

GMG becomes 38 Studios

Via Nerfbat.

Executives of Green Monster Games, a new studio located in Massachusetts with Curt Schilling as CEO and founder, have officially renamed their company to 38 Studios, LLC. This has absolutely no bearing on the quality of the products that they will hopefully produce, and though I like the former name better, this company continues to top my MMO Watch List.

The creative, community development and design team that has been put together is a veritable whose-who of industry stars. Moreover, having a money man like Curt Schilling, whose love of MMO gaming is no secret basically ensures that appropriate financing will be available to see the premier game title to a successful launch.

I figure we are four years away from a 38 Studios launch and by that time, World of Warcraft, LoTRO, Vanguard, EQII and whatever meanwhile titles will have aged beyond relevance, paving the way for a new existential world to fill gigs on my hard drive.

Corporations go MMO

Mainstream would be the word to describe the recent relevance of the virtual world in current tech society. With games such as World of Warcraft attracting record numbers of people, to MTV's Virtual Laguna Beach and its ilk targeting a totally new segment of the population, it comes as no surprise that leading institutions will be capitalizing on the trend in some way.

The first reported case, being IBM. IBM has begun to use Linden Lab's Second Life, as a forum to host meetings, conduct breakout sessions and employee trainings, as well as utilizing the pre-existing tools developed by the virtual world, to conduct business culture experiments. In exchange for the use of the space, IBM has done free coding of various in-world features, and provided the rights to Linden Labs.

Note to Self: Go work for a company that hosts company outings in Naxxrammas.

This Week in Gaming

• The third expansion of EverQuest II, enters the Beta phase of testing. Blackguard has the scoop at the EQII forums.
• Ironically, that is likely to be the last scoop, that Blackguard has for a while. Ryan "Blackguard" Shwayder says farewell to Sony and Everquest II.
• The Serpents Spine, the next expansion in the venerable EverQuest dynasty is now live. A truer game title was never coined...
• VGTact has a Vanguard Beta key contest for September. Do you have what it takes?
• Maybe this guy should put less blame on World of Warcraft, and more on failing at life? Please go play in a busy street, prior to contributing any more ammunition to the 'gamer addict' meme.
• Guild Wars: Nightfall is conducting a free world preview today through Sunday. Nightfall is the third expansion for the popular game title, with renewed focus on PvP in Guild Wars.
• Kotaku directed me to this, interesting story about the virtual sex trade rampant in Second Life. For my money, I'd rather slay dragons and inspire kings than grind on the man-gina, but to each their own.
• I couldn't make this stuff up if I tried, folks... MTV's Virtual Laguna Beach entered Beta this week, produced by Macena Technologies. Macena designer and Terra Nova alum, Betsy Book has the scoop, and its implications in today's pop culture madness.

Hot of the Press!

From Eyonix over at the Warcraft forums:

Alright, I will provide you and everyone else with two tidbits of information that we've not yet revealed through any source. Both of which I'm personally very excited about, and hopefully you will be as well. First, when the Burning Crusade launches, healing over time (HoTs) spells such as Rejuvenation and Renew will stack for every player casting them. For instance, if there are three priests in your group, a target could potentially receive three renews as one time. Second, we're going to be scaling Warlock and Hunter pets come expansion so that they become stronger as the player gains more statistics through itemization.

This is both an incredibly overdue change and an exceptionally exciting change, given that my main in Azeroth is one of the afore mentioned classes, and my wife plays another (Ya, thats right guys, I married a girl gamer... Perhaphs if you stick around here long enough, I'll share the secrets of my success.)

This Week in Gaming

• Curt Schilling, famed ace of the Boston Redsox and Everquest junkie, has teamed up with Todd McFarlane and R. A. Salvatore, to develop Green Monster Games. As a Red Sox fan, and an avid Salvatore reader, I am interested in the progress of this MMO company.
• New York Times, has the scoop on the highly awaited Nintendo: Wii release. $250.00, November 19th, 25 game titles at launch, and enough copies to avoid the major sell-outs of the 360.
• It appears that the MMO Blogosphere is falling in love with a new Spanish MMO, PrisonServer... Just don't drop the soap guys, and you'll do just fine.
• Blizzard has released an Interactive Map of Outlands, the new world in their eagerly awaited expansion, The Burning Crusade.
• Everybody whose anybody was at the Austin Game Conference last weekend, which means I was at home reading about it. Rob Pardo of Blizzard received great reviews for his Keynote address on the success of World of Warcraft and the lessons that the MMO community can learn from that success.
• Newsweek on Living a Virtual Life. They have put together a fairly balanced look at WoW, and they seem to be implying that normal, successful people play MMOs...
• Heartless Gamer has a, well... heartless take on the four newly released Vanguard: Saga of Heros videos. MMO fans everywhere want to love this game so badly, and we can't stop wondering why Brad&Co. are working so hard to change that...
• The 100 Most Influential Women in Gaming. We /salute you.