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  1. Ukerric

    EQMac Now Free to Play

    I remember that, on Sebilis (the french euro server created by Ubisoft to try to expand the market in france), my guild managed to get formed about about 1h after the server went up. We got that ID 0 guild, because the guides and GM hadn't got around to create theirs yet.
  2. Ukerric

    World of Warcraft: Current Year

    Snowball effect, mainly. The main reason you keep playing is because others keep playing; you play because your guildmates still play. As long as the guild keeps a healthy roster so that you always have a raid night, a couple guildies to dungeon run or BG with, it's ok. But when a couple people...
  3. Ukerric

    World of Warcraft: Current Year

    Blizzard is 100% owned by Activision-Blizzard, which itself is no longer majority-owned by Vivendi.
  4. Ukerric

    World of Warcraft: Current Year

    Apple has over 130 billion (yes, billion) $ in cash stored offshore. Think of the debt reduction one could do with those back taxes...
  5. Ukerric

    World of Warcraft: Current Year

    ... until November 8th where the Return of the Legion is announced for Q2 2014 during Blizzcon opening. Which analysts estimate will be paid back in about 2 years.
  6. Ukerric

    Wildstar Launch Thread - Server: Stormtalon | Faction: Dominion

    So that everybody looks like everybody else.
  7. Ukerric

    The Elder Scrolls Online

    Also, they backpedaled, and are now saying this is "multiplayer Elder Scrolls", and are trying to bury the Massively qualifier under a citadel or something. (aka no end-game content whatsoever save doing the other 2 factions quests, and some RvR action)
  8. Ukerric

    World of Warcraft: Current Year

    At this rate, they're going to have negative asian sub numbers to justify the stable EU/NA ones...
  9. Ukerric

    The Elder Scrolls Online

    Well, since we've got nothing to blame upon TESO these days, we might as well blame it for NCSoft's shortcomings!
  10. Ukerric

    EQ Never

    One week. One week.
  11. Ukerric

    The Elder Scrolls Online

    In what way? Do you suffer from the delusion that, somehow, sub money is fully reinvested in some quality content rather than lining up the pockets of the publisher? If so, I'd like to introduce you to this handsome man. Mr Kotick, meet Mr Creed. Mr Creed, meet Mr Kotick. He'll teach you how...
  12. Ukerric

    The Elder Scrolls Online

    That's Ut we're talking about. By definition, he's never wrong and can't be wrong. And he doesn't agree to disagree either.
  13. Ukerric

    The Mighty Quest for Epic Loot (f2p MMO)

    Just got spammed by Ubi to get into the "free beta", so I assume it's now open.
  14. Ukerric

    EQ Never

    Phasing is a vehicle to deliver a single-player story in a multiplayer context. In other words, it's a kludge, a band-aid, to shoehorn things that, according to many, have no place in a MMO (i.e. the conceit that You Are the Awesome Prophesied Savior of the Universe... along with everyone else...
  15. Ukerric

    World of Warcraft: Current Year

    About every major multinational company these days operates on the same system. A stack of off-shore companies holding "IP rights" that your real company has to pay at exorbitant rates, which happen to just match the amount of profit you made. In a world where the majority of the stockholder...
  16. Ukerric

    EQ Never

    With ONE major difference that changed everything. Every class could solo and level at relatively close to the same rate, from 1 to max. (there's of course a few differences, such as the major use of questing as a mechanism of levelling and directing players to content, but the above is...
  17. Ukerric

    EQ Never

    No. It's because of risk management. Today, WoW has become the"To save the cat"of MMO space: a type of game that appears to work (10 million subs can't be wrong), and thus, must be faithfully copied to minimize risk. Up to 2005 (coincidence?) when that book came around, you had all kind of...
  18. Ukerric

    Wildstar Launch Thread - Server: Stormtalon | Faction: Dominion

    You may need to play a beta (or demo) to have a VALID opinion, but you will have an opinion without the beta. And that opinion will, for most people, determine whether or not they're going to give it a chance. At the moment, it's "sunday morning cartoons WoW", with a lot of opportunities to...
  19. Ukerric

    EQ Never

    Well, early this year, Smedley seemed very confident we'd (I quote): "get (our) hands on an actual release version ... ? and I don?t mean a beta". So, no, the pre-alpha was when he said that in january, and alpha was Q2 when they tweeted being able to play it, and beta will start after Fan...
  20. Ukerric

    EQ Never

    Befallen was a hell. Early in 99, a friend of mine did the "oops, I dropped thru the well" and then went with a few passerby trying to recover his corpse. After dying 4 or 5 times, he asked for help in guild, and that's when things got wrong. It turns out that the Bard "locate corpse" would...
  21. Ukerric

    World of Warcraft: Current Year

    I think it was a quote from one of the devs/CM. Although they might have not referred to heroics in general but more about server/world-first racing guilds; I'm not sure.
  22. Ukerric

    World of Warcraft: Current Year

    The current model is, in ilvl: LFR (25) -> Flex (10 to 25) -> Normal (10/25) -> Heroic (10/25) A lot of us expect that the Return of the Legion (or whatever it ends being called) expansion will collapse that to LFR -> Flex -> Heroic 25 (since the immense majority of heroics are done in 25...
  23. Ukerric

    EQ Never

    It's all in the context. "Go to the forest next door, kill young red bears until you find an ass and bring it back" is a task. "Go to Innoruuk's bedroom in Plane of Hate, and bring me his paperknife" is a quest.
  24. Ukerric

    EQ Never

    Well, the WoW devs tried desperately to call their NPC ennemies creeps, if I remember right. Instead of mobs. They couldn't make it stick. Oh, and shards is UO-parlance. It's the excuse UO devs invented to justify the existence of multiple servers: each was supposed to be a "shard" of the Gem...
  25. Ukerric

    EQ Never

    No, tutorial missions are like other missions: one area of the zone that is normally empty is filled with the mission props (gates, asteroids, outposts, whatever), and you get a bookmark thru the mission log to warp there. But it's certainly not instanced: if someone scans the system, they can...
  26. Ukerric

    EQ Never

    No one wants Progressquest either. A mob shouldn't be challenging because you lack the DPS rotation to kill it. It should be challenging because a tactical error during the fight means bad things happen (the mob escapes; reinforcements come; you get rooted and nuked because you didn't...
  27. Ukerric

    EQ Never

    And you'd win, since Brad stated, as early as 2000 or 2001 that they thought people would do it that way. Of course, without instancing, the problem of crawling was that once you had more than 3 groups in a given dungeon, the odds of finding a named alive when you came around its room started...
  28. Ukerric

    EQ Never

    No one advocates Progressquest. What we're saying is: if there's no real decision involved in hitting a button during combat (to the point you hit it by reflex or you program a macro to hit it), then that button shouldn't be there. Adding an ability that is used as soon as it comes off cooldown...
  29. Ukerric

    World of Warcraft: Current Year

    Never attribute to malice what can be adequately explained by incompetence.
  30. Ukerric

    EQ Never

    No, what I describe is what GW2's combat was supposed to be. And, for most classes, is. You have your auto-attack, then a bunch of situational abilities (notably dodge) on cooldown/short-term resource. Press 1, then react using 2-3-4-5-6-7-8-9-0 depending on what's needed. Alas, a lot of classes...
  31. Ukerric

    World of Warcraft: Current Year

    You think the age of sub-based MMOs is still with us? That model of business is dying its last grasps, and the problem that every MMO that think it can be sub-based, and faces F2P conversion after 3 months gets the conversion badly done. Online game services went from "pay-by-the-hour-played"...
  32. Ukerric

    EQ Never

    Yes, and the point that most people want to make about rotations is that the rotation itself is not a decision. Rotations are kludges designed to satisfy a category of gamers (which a personally call "console gamers", and others less nice things) that think that, if they are not constantly...
  33. Ukerric

    EQ Never

    And we know the casters got nerfed since they all rerolled.
  34. Ukerric

    EQ Never

    It's the official Kerran poster you're allowed to download if you endorse EQ Next on Google+ (https://www.everquestnext.com/). They just added their site's logo... (the Ogre is from following on twitter, the Nagafen is from liking on Facebook) Note that this doesn't mean the characters or...
  35. Ukerric

    EQ Never

    "Annoying to need in the cash shop" = bad shop design. "Tempting to use the cash shop" = good shop design.
  36. Ukerric

    Wurm Online Hardcore Sandbox MMO

    There was a thread on it on the old FoH forums. And yes, as someone indicated, the similarities with Minecraft are obvious once you know that Markus "Notch" Persson worked on it before leaving to make Minecraft alpha full time. But it's not a Mojang MMO. Problems with the MMO are: 1) If...
  37. Ukerric

    EQ Never

    My limit is simple: there's nothing game-affecting in the cash shop that I can't get (or get in a different way) without it. XP pots? Random loot-filled bags? Fine by me. Exclusive weapon that's 20% better than anything dropped? Potions that allow you to "recover" from last week's raiding so you...
  38. Ukerric

    EQ Never

    Sounds good to me. The only way it could have been better is if, instead of introducing the 10/25 split, they had simply added flex raid instead (with heroic triggers that essentially required you to be 25 if you wanted a chance of success) .
  39. Ukerric

    EQ Never

    Yup. When you fail to down a boss because of DPS, you can either bring another DPS, or ask the lowest DPS to improve. If one of those options is closed to you due to raid cap, then you face the hardest of all challenges...
  40. Ukerric

    The Mighty Quest for Epic Loot (f2p MMO)

    Friend got in and tested a bit. There's serious imbalance right now. The "right" way is to use massive amounts of slow traps and decoy corridors: if you can't make it to the treasure room in time, you lose. At higher levels there might be counters to this strategy, but lower levels is hell: you...