Ardwulf Unplugged Podcast Episode 02

The second show! Unlike the first show and the trial episode 00, this one is a true podcast, and should be finding its way to iTunes eventually, assuming there are no hitches with that process. Note that, as mentioned in the show, the format, technology and hosting platform are all still in flux and subject to experiment and change. If you’d like to listen to it now, you can do so HERE. I may put this up on YouTube, but I may not, depending on how satisfactory GCast proves to be.

Show Notes

• Launch week for Aion and Fallen Earth, along with Aion mini-rant.
• First Anniversary for Warhammer Online.
• Big Surge in D&D Online Xfire numbers.
• Pandemic Legion wins EVE Online’s Alliance Tournament VII.
• APB taking Beta applications.
• Rocking prog soundtrack by Anthony Gio.

Feedback appreciated!

UPDATE: Ardwulf Unplugged is now available on iTunes.

 

Say Hello to New Planet Graphics

While I’m waiting for an update on the status of my replacement graphics card, here’s a bit of a teaser from the Singularity tester server – a taste of the new planet graphics coming to Tranquility with Dominion.

Not all of the new planet graphics are on the test server yet, so this video only samples one planet type… but it looks nice to me. I can’t wait for my PC to get back up and running and for this to show up in the live game. as if it was possible for EVE to make even prettier screenshots.

 

Yet Another Title, Meet the NCSoft Axe

Dungeon Runners is shutting down. Despite the fact that the development team was sitting on a detailed, virtually ready to go package that they felt would make the game profitable, pending NCSoft management’s approval. Here today their decision was announced.

No, this game isn’t making enough money to pay the huge development staff of three people. You’ll pardon me for saying that I simply don’t believe that Dungeon Runners was doing so badly it couldn’t afford three guys and the Commodore 64 the servers were running on.

No, NCSoft would not like to put a plan into place that could make the game profitable – a plan that they sat on for months. No, NCSoft has to axe it. How many times will this happen? How many failures will this company rack up? How long before Aion gets the NCSoft Executive Treatment? City of Heroes? What the hell kind of retard business plan is it to pour development money into a project – no, sorry, make that projects – and then, when it’s not as profitable as hoped, kill it off? Not try to save it. Not sell it off to somebody who could make it successful, like, say, selling off Auto Assault to NetDevil, who’d developed it and wanted to buy it rather than see it die, and maybe recoup some of those costs. No, clearly the best idea is to bury it, where it will never make any money again. Awesome business sense, at least if making games fail is your business.

I wasn’t a particular fan of Dungeon Runners, but there’s no reason it couldn’t have been a modestly profitable game. Way to go, NCSoft. Again. I’m not as much sad to see it go as sad for the people who liked it, and incredulous, yet again, that anyone would trust this company to manage the manufacture of a ham sandwich, much less a complicated enterprise like an MMO.

CLARIFICATION: No, I don’t actually think City of Heroes, Guild Wars or Aion are getting shut down anytime soon. The point, for those who missed it, is that there seems to be zero margin for errors or setbacks at NCSoft. Given the history of MMOs, how sensible does this seem?

 

Computer Woes

After a morning spent trying to troubleshoot some serious computer issues, it looks like my graphics card dropped a big loaf this morning. I am a bit distressed – but the thing is lifetime guaranteed. Spoke to an EVGA rep this morning and got an RMA number, so I should have a replacement sent out relatively quickly.

The bad news is that I’m out of business as far as gaming goes until probably the middle of next week. Not offline – there’s Mrs. Ardwulf’s computer plus the laptop that I’m using right now, both sturdily connected to the series of tubes.

I’m installing the EVE client right now – this machine ran the old classic client well enough to mine in hi-sec, so I’m hoping that it’ll fare well enough on the new client to at least get in and change skills over at minimum. Champions is likely down for the count until I get the main computer running again.

UPDATE: Confirmed that the video card is bricked. It’s off to EVGA via UPS, and I’m down for all meaningful gaming until what will probably be late next week at the earliest. The laptop runs the new EVE client… poorly. I can get in to switch skills out, though.

 

An Upgrade in Mining

Mining in an industrial is low-maintenance, but efficient it ain’t. This morning I broke out my new Scythe mining cruiser, which when equipped with three mining lasers is making short work of those nefarious asteroids. This method is about four times more efficient than mining in the Wreathe.

I also crunched some numbers and found that: a) it’s marginally more profitable for me to refine my own ore and sell the minerals off rather than selling the bulk ore, even with my currently weak skills, and b) it’s marginally more profitable for me to mine Veldspar than it is Scordite, where I’m at right now. The money isn’t exactly booming in at the moment, but I’m working toward a mining barge and should be there in a matter of days.

However, I also realized that this being the case, the next thing I’ll be working on will be Refining… so it’d make sense to sit a bit on my pile of ore until I pop down at least one more rank, and a little Veldspar Processing as well. With all this fussing, plus the fact that I’ll be away for the weekend, I finally got around to installing EVEMon again, which oddly enough is probably more useful with the new skill queue than it was before. Or perhaps I should say that the skill queue makes EVEMon easier to use as a planning tool.

 

Ardwulf Unplugged Episode 01: D&D Online

Along comes the first proper episode of the Ardwulf Unplugged minicast. I’m still finding my feet with the software I’m using and with the art of being recorded itself, although I think I managed to clear out most of the hemming and humming. This was a lot of fun to put together, and I plan to do more of them, but don’t necessarily expect them to come out on any set schedule.

Show Notes

• Discussion of Dungeons & Dragons Online: Why the old subscription model was a bad fit, why the new free-to-play model should better serve the game and its audience, and a brief rundown of what DDO has to offer.
• Certified rant-free.
• Total Runtime: 4:48

As a quick addendum, Episode 00 is now also available on YouTube, HERE, for anyone who’s curious; there’s very little to it, as it was just a test, but I figured I’d keep them all in one place. My YouTube channel is HERE.

 

Contributing to Ardwulf’s Lair

You’ll notice a new addition to Ardwulf’s Lair today: the “Donate” button atop the sidebar. Clicking the button will take you to a secure PayPal site, where you can donate as little (or as much) as you like.

I don’t make any money from blogging, I’m actually okay with that, and intend to continue doing so as long as the enterprise remains fun. What I would like is for this site to become better — and that’s going to take some cash that I can’t spare out of pocket money right now. A dedicated domain (which would enable a host of additional features and enhancements,) podcasting hosting space, and maybe some better software for doing things like editing graphics and video are where I intend to have the money go.

I don’t need a wheelbarrow full of cash, and my personal circumstances are not dire – but it would be awfully nice to see this effort be a self-sustaining enterprise. Just a few bucks here and there would be a big help, and a very small number of people making very modest donations could enhance Ardwulf’s Lair tremendously.

Meanwhile, I promise to keep blogging regardless of the success or failure of the donation effort. At this point, I figure, however small my readership, after two years and over 500 blog posts (several novels by word count — and it’s been a while since I last checked that,) everybody should know that I’ll be around for the duration.

 

Ardwulf Unplugged Episode 00

The multimedia explosion here at Ardwulf’s Lair continues with the first of what I hope will be a series of mini-casts covering the same array of subjects I deal with here on the blog… with perhaps a little extra vigor. The shows will be short — no longer than 5-10 minutes each.

Ardwulf Unplugged Episode 00

This is a sample clip rather than a full-fledged “show” and doesn’t discuss anything of import except introducing the show itself. I’ll be damned if I can get embedding working on either of the two hosting options I’ve tried thus far. I’ll be working on that.

UPDATE: Both of the websites I’ve been trying to get this thing to work on allegedly support embedding; neither one actually works, which may have as much to do with WordPress as anything else. At this pont I have given up on it. However, YouTube embeds work just fine, and the additional amount of work required to do a video with a mostly static image is pretty trivial. So for as long as this phase of the project continues, I’ll be using YouTube as my platform.

Also, see this post for a hint of where I plan to go with this kind of stuff.

 

The Warhammer Death Spiral

From the minute I started tracking Xfire statistics for MMOs, Warhammer Online was trending downward. I missed a few weeks and when I went to catch my numbers today I was taken aback by what I saw. Xfire users are spending a third the time in WAR that they were a mere two months ago. That’s not a slow leak of subscribers, that’s people fleeing with their hair on fire.

WAR’s numbers are still fairly decent – it’s ranked #48 today (For reference, Age of Conan is #52 and the numbers are very close.) But it won’t be if this trend continues. By the time Cataclysm comes out, we may find Warhammer at the bottom of that whirlpool between Kalimdor and the Eastern Kingdoms.

I’m not for a minute suggesting that Warhammer is doomed or beyond saving – that would be grossly premature. But it’s increasingly looking like Mythic is going to need a major move in the next six months to halt the tsunami of departing players. I suspect that Aion is stealing, or will steal away many players for whom WAR’s PvP did not live up to its potential. Aion’s surge is inevitable at this point, but three or four months after it launches when all the shine has worn off… that will be when Mythic needs something decisive. Unless Mortal Online gets in the way.

 

A Renaissance For D&D Online

I’ve made no secret of the fact that I think D&D Online is an under-appreciated game. It’s also true, though, that DDO’s mode of play isn’t all that well-suited to the traditional subscription model, and that $15 a month was an anchor around the game’s neck. Now that the fancy and free iteration of DDO is live, the question is: how much will it help the game? And by “help the game,” I of course mean helping increase the number of people playing – a total that’s always been lackluster at best.

Obviously it’s too early to say, although if things work out well I’m sure we’ll see some deserved chest-thumping out of Turbine. I am seeing quite a few flash ads for DDO right now, so Turbine is spending at least a little bit of that mountain of money on promoting the game, which has to help.

However, I can also look at Xfire numbers, which should imply something (figuring out what being the tricky part, of course.) And the implication right now is very, very positive. As of today, DDO is #28 in Xfire’s rankings. That’s well above Warhammer Online and Age of Conan – and people are logging almost twice as many hours in DDO as they are in WAR. You can read that as really bad news for WAR if you like, but I’d prefer to see it as good news for DDO.

Of course, the game’s free, so logged hours don’t translate directly into dollars, and it’s really early in DDO’s new life to say what the lasting impact will be – and it’d certainly be unreasonable to expect that the game’s numbers will stay anywhere near where they are now. At least at the moment, however, things are looking up – very up – for D&D Online.