Ravens Forums

http://tcos.com/en/gameworld/?id=statistics

Looks good, though could be very very poor as well

Sax.

Yup, I dont know much about it but from the content end of things its supposed to be pretty good, I'll give it a week or two to see what I think.  Biggest problem for me is when I play a pvp game I always compare it to DAoC and so far they've all fallen short ...

Yeah I saw this, or at least I think I did as our work e-mail system is blocking the link.  Basically EA bought out Mythic to create EA Mythic right?  I just hope they dont get in there and start changing things round tbh, I just dont think EA could make a decent mmorpg, to me EA is synonomous with sprorts titles from the Super Nes days.

I would imagine GW would have a say in any changes, but I reckon the buy out could delay the product by 6 months at least.

Sax.

I think the slider is for those who take the essentially non-combat route, mebbe playing a bard.  I have also found it is getting way harder like you Cern, but I am really close to being able to buy and cast a uber summoning spell all I need iirc is a couple lvls for more mana (I dont have nuf to even cast it yet) and some cash then I can summon up some serious mobs at which point I guess it'll get alot easier.

Also I dunno if you worked this out, but I recently found out what the 'stones' are for when you destroy an Oblivion Gate, you can add these 'stones' (forget what they are called) to your weapon and hey presto loadsa damage.  Problem is when you use them they eat mana, which means you need lots of Soul Stones to re-power them, I hadn't got to the point of smoothing this out so I keep running out of Sword Power half way through some quest and getting torn up pretty bad  : :rolleyes:

Sax.

Games should be games, and I dont endorse or agree, or approve of the buying or selling of ingame stuff period.  If a game where to come out that did endorse the buying and selling of stuff to a serious degree, I'd prolly stay clear as would most ppl, I think there is a balance to be struck in this.

Though I see the fact there is a balance to be struck I still dont like it, I'd prefer a game where buying and selling was banned, I just dont think that is realistic, hell even back in the day (2000) for me when I was playing AC I heard of ppl selling there lvl 80+ toons and getting big bucks for them.  The complaints that went around about some newb running a high lvl toon and not knowing how to play that character.

Money > all as always

Ok, at work we get a publication called New Scientist every week, I am sure you've prolly heard of it, its a non-pier reviewed scientific magazine (I dont think you can call it a Journal).  Anyway I was reading through the issue from 20/05/06 and found an article called "Just a game? ", it had a sub title "With crime in the virtual world beginning to spill into the real one, it's time to decide where legitimate game play ends and law breaking begins, says Tim Guest"

Its an interesting article, and I thought I'd highlight a couple of points for your enjoyment/amazement as thats prolly a better way of describing what I read.

"AS  MURDERS go, it was an open and shut case.  In february last year Qiu Chengwei, a 41 year old man from Shanghai loaned his prize sword, called a Dragon Sabre, to his 26 year old friend Zhu Caoyuan.  Without telling Qiu, Zhu sold it for ?500, pocketing the proceeds.  Qiu complained to the police that Zhu had stolen his sword, but they refused to help.  So early one morning a month later, Qiu broke into Zhu's house and stabbed him to death."

To cut a long story short Qiu was sentanced to life imprison, but it raises the question about how to deal with virtual crimes spilling over into the real world.

Another interesting blurb from the article is ...

"In 2004 IGE, a virtual item trading website based in Boca Raton, Florida, estimated the global market in virtual goods to be worth around $880 million a year and growing."

Thats 2 years ago!!

The thrid story that cuaght my attention which I'll describe briefly as it'll take to long to type out is this.

A dude in Eve who is the CEO of Guiding Hand a mercenary corporation that specialises in destroying other players characters for profit was asked to put thier skills to use against Ubiqua Seraph for 1 billion ISK (about ?350).  A memeber of GH went deep deep undercover (Beverly Hills cop?) and spent four months wooing the head of US until she had hired him and eventually gave him the access codes to her guilds storehouses, thier virtual bank.  In doing this GH had staged raids against US designed to fail and make thier operative look good.  Once the operative had the access codes GH looted 6 warehouses, killed the leader of US Arenis Xemdal, delivered her corpse to the client and kept the stolen property, spoils of war.  The stolen property added up to 30 billion ISK in total, about ?10,000 on the market.

Its said that Eves devs looked favourably upon this action and the story was told far and wide which brought in new subscribers.  After the hiest some players where outraged and sent the guy who played the leader of GH nine email and telephone deaths threats.

The article then has a few more anicdotes and from various games.

Just thought I'd bring this to your attention, as personally I didn't think things had gone quite this far and was suprised to find out what goes on in some games.

Sax.

Was drawn out in single player, lots of battles that were kinda boring, would prefer fewer more significant and deep battles tbh.  Shame was expecting something special from this game.  If I want this kinda game play in the future i'll boot the ps2 up and play FF10 am real close to completing it as well, but haven't touched it for an age.