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Devoted to covering the ever-expanding world of Multi-Player Online Games (MPOG's). House Forsaken Quest For Yap TDZK OMGN The White Sox Reporter Reds Roundup
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Friday, September 05, 2003
ROBERT LUDWICK'S LATEST EDITORIAL at OMGN is pretty good. Here it is: How to...Build an Online Successful Game You know, new games pop up on the internet faster than you can count. Whether it’s an award winning coder, or someone else dying to learn, the internet has been a strong hold for knowledge and fun, and gamers continue to put the two together to create online gaming as we know it today. With the strategy and plot entwisted games of the new age. You know, there are several things that make a great game. It’s not just your code, or your fancy layout or mesmerizing gameplay that make a game a phenomenon, but it’s all those factors put into one shiny package. 1) Code This may not be the only thing you need, but it is very important. Your code is your game, even if you release your game in a “Beta Status”, the people who play that don’t care. You have to remember that gamers forget the meaning to terms like beta; they expect it to be a finished product for them to play even if it’s not. Don’t get frustrated when you get asked continuous questions or continuously get told about errors, you should appreciate it if people step forward and help you advance your game. 2) Community Once you get your code playable, start to build up your community. Some people believe that you should finish your game completely before you bring in the masses, but unfortunately they’re wrong. People come, and if they are even slightly attached to your game, there needs to be some incentive for them to stay, and communities are what create that incentive. Humans need interaction, it’s in our nature. 3) Advertising Ouch, you say? It doesn’t have to be like that. Advertising doesn’t necessarily mean paying someone to display your ad; you just have to go about things smart. a. Word of Mouth – Word of Mouth is one of the best ways to advertise your game. People would be more apt to try out a game if a friend refers them rather than a banner ad. b. Banner Ads – There are a lot of free ad exchange sites/programs if you’re pocket book is wimpy, but for the full effect advertising on high traffic sites with common interests of your game is a great idea (Hint Hint OMGN ;P) So basically, a game can’t be built off of just code, you need the elements of a great community and some quality advertising to get you there. Oh, and people love prizes! Thursday, September 04, 2003
From the #smr IRC room: <-- SpaceCowboy (~44215ccc@irc.VJTD3.com) has left #smr --- Skarlet is now known as Skarlet-sleep --> Shadow-TSG (Shadow-TSG@ACA363FE.ipt.aol.com) has joined #smr TONS OF NEAT EMAIL ADDRESSES: "Chase Nguyen" "Matt Spears" "News Submission" "Doug McIntyre" "Charles Rector" "News Submission" "Mystery" "meatball" "??" "MMOG" "Ahmedf Farog" "Thomas" "Betty B" "Worth Playing" "Micheal Butt" "John Neeson" "John Calhoon" "Sal Accardo" "Press" "David Laprad" "Martin Taylor" "Editor Email Box" "Tom Bramwell" "John Bye" "Marcus Lai" "Jim Cordeira" "Andrew Alfonso" "Editor" "press" "Ben Silverman" "Kevin Baird" "Shawn Rider" "Sarah Wichlacz" "Jeff Luther" "Blue" "Andre" "Alan Bell" "Scott Weiler" news@shacknews.com, "Keith" "Dan Clarke" news@games-fusion.net, "press@gamitopia.com" "Bob" "khbal gaming" news@invisibledream.com, "MPZ" "Kris Massey" news@frictionlessinsight.com, editor@gamenationtv.com, "Flordia Gaming Network" mark@gamezilla.com, "loaded inc" "to the game" "Jamie" sp eed@crew.fragland.net, pc_mail@ign.com, "zaxxon" "windaria" "platnium gaming" "UltraMag" "Game Over" "The Armchair Empire" "Editor" erich@escmag.com, msmyth@escmag.com, oliver.hurley@futurenet.co.uk, "MMGON" news@gamespy.com, "GameSpy" "Wargammer" "Nick" "geekshelter" pace@irrational.com.au, email@Game2K.com, news@gamehelper.com, "Elited News" "Rick Haynes" "news editor" "Riade" "news gamershell" "Prophecy" "Eurogamer" "Cary Schwartzman" staff@actiontrip.com SOME NEAT URL'S: http://swgcb.yogn.net/swg-cb.php http://www.diabloii.net//pressdesk/bliz_chat-03-06-19.php Photoshop tutorials: http://www.eyeball-design.com/index3.htm www.designsbymark.com http://phong.com/tutorials/ Tuesday, September 02, 2003
NEW JAMES BOND GAME UPCOMING!: In just a few weeks, EA GAMES will be launching the new 007 website, complete with cast list, features such as gadgets, vehicles and locations, and downloads such as official wallpapers for the game. Your favorite features from the previous site will be archived, including 007 Insiders, news, events, and press releases. Keep your browser pointed to http://007.ea.com for great changes ahead! GAME RIFTS SPORADIC NEWSLETTER: It’s time for a GameRifts.com (link: http://www.gamerifts.com) Newsletter! No, really. I think it’s like once or twice a year we remember to send a newsletter (thus the Sporadic name), because we hate spam just like everyone else. But, the other night some of us were talking that most folks learn about the site as they read something from a link on another site, check us out, sign up on the newsletter and then forget about us, as they don’t get spammed. So, were spamming ya! As the dog days of summer are on us, we have been to busy. Checked out E3 (You can read about it here (link: http://www.gamerifts.com/sections/e3_2003/), and just got back from GenCon (link: http://www.gencon.com) (Which will have a recap starting Monday August 4, 2003) which moved to Indianapolis from Milwaukee. I have to say, the move was a good one and for all you cheese-heads that may be offended, Milwaukee is Ghetto by comparison. Opinions vary. We still have WizWorld (link: http://www.wizarduniverse.com/) coming up in less than a week in Chicago that Maestro and I am going to check out, and were trying to get Rokin to cover the Game Developers Conference (link: http://www.gameconference.com) taking place in Austin next month. We’ve seen some games released this year, that have been sitting in a box next to my PC which still need to be reviewed. Anyone interesed in doing game reviews, for free? If you’re an uber gamer, be sure to check out OfflineTshirts (link: http://www.offlinetshirts.com) who have a good collection of game shirts and gear. If you are bored to tears playing Hearts or other similar games, then head back to some of the old school card days and check out Game Table Online (link: http://www.gametableonline.com) where you can play some RPG Classics, head to head over the net with others. Groone has been busy diversifying also, if you’re a guild in need of a place to plant your website, check out GamersPit (link: http://gamerspit.com). He’s got some excellent pricing plans going on. Tell him GameRifts.com sent ya. Finally, if you have still have not picked up a copy of PlanetSide, well were holding ANOTHER contest on our boards (link: http://www.gamerifts.com/boards/). This time we have 8 copies to give away to random winners that were going to draw from a hat, or something. Go get your revenge for this email and spam our boards. Check the rules though, and good luck. If you want to be removed from out newsletter, there is like a thing on the front page of the site, which you can unsubscribe on, or reply to this mail with the subject remove. But, if your address doesn’t match, we can’t help ya. Div GameRifts.com Latest PM: Your last msg included the following sentence: "You running Clan Forsaken than? Broswer game version of the guild or still running in SB? We have about 30 or so of us in SWG if ya want to hook with us?" I do not have anything to do with Clan Forsaken other than that for some weird reason or another, they haven't taken me off the @clan-forsaken.com email forwarding address. Must be another aspect of the leadership's laziness or something. Nor, do I play SB, SWG or for that matter any Massively Multiplayer Online Game. All the games that I play in are Browser-Based Games. As for HF, the only game where they have a real playing group is in SB and though there is a HF group in SWG, my understanding is that its declining due to both defections and dissatisfaction with the game. Following is a PM that I recently sent a guy at another gaming site: Laminad's doing fine in real life, but between college and work, he has little time for gaming. His time in HF is now spent on a few posts or so on the forum every week. As for House Forsaken itself, it has mostly disintegrated. When I joined it back in October, 2000, it was a powerhouse outfit in several different games. Now, outside of Shadowbane, it has basically become not much more than a glorified forum clan. Shadowbane is the only game where its had any real success recruiting and in being able to keep up a decent gaming group during the past 6 months or so. The basic reason for this decline and fall is that the founder-leader of HF, UsuRpeR, has little time anymore for either the clan or gaming. However, he wants to remain in charge of everything. So, what's he's done is to appoint someone to handle the day to day affairs while UsuRpeR makes the big decisions. The first of these leaders was Laminad who did a fine job and who kept the clan running smoothly. However, Laminad got to his present situation where he didn't have the time anymore and so he was replaced by a succession of persons who were either unfit for the task or who were undercut by UsuRpeR who in turn has had an increasing tendency to interfere in matters where he really doesn't know what's going on. I myself was forced out of HF in April of this year. What happened was that 2 long-time HF members were caught in wholesale cheating and worse in TDZK where I was the HF leader. Under HF rules and standards, cheating is something that is not to be tolerated and in the past, if you got caught cheating, you were almost always expelled from the clan. Only problem was that the rule breakers were big friends of the guy that was in charge of day to day operations. On top of that, the 2 cheaters were pals of UsuRpeR and they got a hold of him and told him that they were being persecuted. UsuRpeR, without even trying to get my side of the story, or that of the other HF members in TDZK, basically absolved them of their crimes and instead trashed me in the HF Forums, made the weirdo accusation that I was attempting a "coup" against his leadership, and demanded that I either apologize to the miscreants or get expelled. Faced with that ultimatum, I resigned from HF as did most of the other HF members in TDZK. The Browser-Based Games Realm quickly went from being the most active gaming group in HF to being a forum clan. On top of that, the mess caused a lot of other HF members to decide that they didn't want to be a part of a poorly run clan that sanctioned disgraceful behavior in the games as long as you're big friends of the top dog who's reall not in touch anymore, and so over the past 5-6 months, a lot of folks have drifted away from the clan while but little recruiting has gone on to make up for the losses. Monday, September 01, 2003
THE INCREASINGLY CORRUPT AND MORIBUND House Forsaken clan has just suffered yet another blow. From the HF Forum: PostPosted: Mon Sep 01, 2003 3:45 am Post subject: To those who brought me in. Reply with quote It was fun playing with you while it lasted, and now I take my leave of you. Those who I started playing with have by and large left or were kicked out and this realm does little anymore so I regretfully leave a good group of people behind. Goodbye Gentlemen ~ DracoLichB PS: Tell me more about the infantry thing, it was a good game I wouldnt mind playing with you guys. Sunday, August 31, 2003
Our very first-ever post: Welcome to the MPOG News-Log! For 17 months I was on the staff of MPOGD, first as a News Reporter, then as the News Editor. During this time, I received but little feedback from the site owner, Doug McIntyre. Them, all of a sudden, I have found my self denied staff access to the site and an ad posted that MPOGD is seeking new news reporters. Meanwhile, Doug won't even respond to my emails. That being the case, I am now continuing the work that I did with MPOGD in the form of this web-log. posted by Charles Rector at 11:40 AM A classic post from the House Forsaken Forum: Space Merchant Realms Update: THE DEATH OF THE FORSAKEN The players community of Space Merchant Realms are rejoicing over what appears to be the death of the The Forsaken alliance, an outfit that has long represented the worst attributes of team behavior in online gaming. TF members have been known to engage in bragadoccio and sending messages to those who they've killed with rub it in taunts. TF members are also generally very vulgar and do what they can to ruin the game for others. Words like "chump" and "lamer" do not begin to describe what The Forsaken are like. Following is a summary of their downfall: 1st, they lost 5 planets in 1 day. 2nd, Their leader,Warlock, went on a spree making wild accusations about spies and traitors and whatnot. 3rd, this led to defections. 4th, the remaining members of the old Horsemen of the Apocalypse or HoA, who had long chafed at being uder the command of the guy who ran their recruitment & training alliance in the old Space Merchant, rebelled and refounded the HoA in the SMR Vets Game taking the TF's last few remaining planets with them. 5th, this leaves the TF with only about a dozen or so members, many of whom are inactive & zero planets. Its widely expected that either Warlock will retire from SMR or will disband the TF and simply join another alliance. Who says that there isn't any justice in this world? Another classic post from the SMR Forum: More on the strange death of the SMR chump/lamer alliance the The Forsaken cut and pasted from the SMR Forum: Ardbeg Joined: 11 Apr 2002 Posts: 258 Posted: Fri Sep 20, 2002 9:20 pm Post subject: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ah yes, it is everyone else's fault that TF disbanded, not yours. I wasn't going to do this in public, but you leave me no choice. TF failed because your leadership sucked - you had one of the best teams ever assembled in SM(R) and treated them like a bunch of newbies. You failed, we told you you had failed, and now you are out for payback - and CM/DR/etc are only too happy to jump on the bandwagon so they can brag forevermore about how they took down HoA. Here's a thought - how about one of the alliances taking us on? I mean, we're supposedly so badly beaten now, that it should be easy enough. No? Don't think you can do it? Fair enough, just keep on with the gangbanging and give me a call when you actually want to play the game...... A long since deleted post from the SMR Forum: And now for some Space Merchant History: The late, lamented game Space Merchant had a controversy-filled history. One aspect of the game's past was the corruption showed by the game's staff that, in part, led to SM's downfall. While it is true that, during this writer's playing days (January, 2000-late summer, 2001), the corruption was pretty much limited to the so-called Veterans Games, where less than 20% of the SM playership did their thing, the end result was to give SM a black eye that helped hasten its downfall. Here from the successor game Space Merchant Realms Forum is a post by one of the all-time greatest players and alliance leaders from SM's past concerning the corruption that eventually destroyed the game: fitch Joined: 16 Sep 2002 Posts: 14 Posted: Wed Sep 25, 2002 10:46 pm Post subject: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Blum wrote: "Admin favouritism towards HoA? Where did you get that from? Do you have any evidence (except for HoA being better than whatever your alliance was) As for HoA having superior numbers that was true only for online numbers at specific moments. HoA, and other "Evil Empires" almost always had to fight groups that were at least twice it's size. BTW, fitch, who are you? What alliance were you in in the good old days?" I was Inspector Fitch back in the old days up until the Catronia Incident, after which I decided that the game was for the birds as long as the then-current staff was running it. I was with, at varying times with the Bounty Hunter's Guild, The Space Marines & Task Force Alpha aka TSM's recruitment/training alliance. What Blum says here about HoA's prowess in the past is all a self-serving myth. First of all, the Horsemen of the Apocalypse was really nothing more than The Unforgiven sans Dude Man and Elvis Fett and renamed to fit Montana_Mike's weirdo predilections. TU, it may be remembered, was the admin's favorite alliance. It was the outfit that Speef, Gir Draxon and Dover all played with. The TU was also the beneficiary of the admin's in-game actions. Speef would change the make up of the universe, moving planets and stuff around in the name of "improving" the universe. It always worked to the advantage of TU and to the detriment of its opponents. Speef would freeze the accounts of entire alliances in the name of an investigation supposedly being made into cheating, a classic example of shooting first and asking questions later. These freezes always came just before a TU attack. It was through such machinations that such major alliances as the Politburo and Willowstrance were destroyed. There were many players who saw through Speef's lies about how he was acting in the game's best interest, but just simply quit since they couldn't see anything that they could do to stop it. However, there was one player with the courage to stand up for that which was right. His name was Rat Fighter, one of the truely great all-time players of the old SM. He posted to the Webboard about Speef's cheatings on behalf of the TU and how it was ruining the game. The TU's leaders, Dude Man and Elvis Fett, were outraged by this courageous act and they rounded up over 100 of their puppets to post back against Rat Fighter and demand that he get banned from SM. In the face of this storm, there were only 2 SM players, Omega Prime and myself, who had the courage to post to the Webboard supporting Rat Fighter. Speef followed the dictates of his TU bosses and banned Rat Fighter from the game. In response, a massive boycott movement sprung up from the players and roughly 40% of the players quit playing SM in a very short period of time. This boycott forced Shareplay owner Jonathan Manton to step in and attempt to fix the problem lest the boycott lead to the destruction of his perilously financed company. However, he failed to fully fix the problem by firing the likes of Speef and hire honest employees. Instead, he decided to ban the admins from playing the game. This had the unfortunate effect of admins not knowing just what effect their changes had on the game, which from what I've heard worked to the game's long-term detriment. Another problem was that old habits died hard. Speef and his colleagues remained cheaters, but they were more careful in how they went about doing things. They turned a blind eye to TU/HoA cheating, but were quick to punish others for doing the same kind of things. Even when they moved against proven cheaters like Catronia, they would quickly backtrack. I left the game after it became clear that cheating would continue to ruin the game. I know of others who left for the same reasons later on. Eventually, all the cheating caught up with Speef and friends and their game eventually went kaput due to the lack of player support. Now, we have honest and impartial admins with Spock and Azool. They have learned the lessons of the past. Mark my words, SMR will prove to be a far greater game than SM ever was. In fact, to some extent it already is, and we have Spock and Azool to thank for it. Inspector Fitch Following is the dominant alliance in Space Merchant Realms: TREX MERCENARIES (42) Message of Day | Roster | Send Message | Message Board | Planets | Forces | Options | List Alliances Soldiers of Fortune for Fun and Profit, http://tm.antietem.com Alliance Name Total Experience Average Experience Number of Members Trex Mercenaries 145,343 4,844 30 Current Members Trader Name Race Experience 1 MikeRotch (541) Creonti 13424 2 Ukhata (407) Alskant 11637 3 Bink (409) Thevian 9680 4 Page (318) Alskant 9597 5 Exterminator (289) WQ Human 9076 6 Qualtain (473) Human 7549 7 Torgo (574) Human 6202 8 Overlord (286) WQ Human 6185 9 Terl (140) Salvene 5752 10* crector (241) Human 5710 11 Captain Dread (466) Alskant 5630 12 CTRTAO (340) Salvene 5445 13 Wasupi (97) Alskant 4856 14 The Green Phox (363) Human 4628 15 Xubbaus (563) Thevian 4432 16 DarkSoul (94) Ik'Thorne 4307 17 Voltar (133) Human 4223 18 El Mariachi (155) WQ Human 4136 19 CooPs (626) Nijarin 4060 20 Doc-X (612) Salvene 4031 21 Lexantrader (522) Salvene 3032 22 ogre (514) Alskant 2489 23 Tenstar (446) Thevian 2022 24 Relichunter (432) WQ Human 1818 25 Renork (669) Thevian 1675 26 aragorn (351) Nijarin 1094 27 AQUABOY (428) WQ Human 1006 28 Detritus (524) Salvene 915 29 The Nexus (502) Nijarin 732 30 DracoLichB (636) Ik'Thorne 0 |