Perplex City - "Alternate Reality" Game

When I came back from GDC this year, I was rather swamped with all the new contacts I had made and some of them fell through the cracks. One of the very interesting games/companies/concepts that I was stoked about at the time, but had since lost track of, is the "alternate reality" game Perplex City by Mind Candy. I just got a note dropped in my mailbox by one of the folks over there, Guy, and he had this to say about the game (which I think does a fantastic job introducing the game and its overall concept):
("read more" to get the story)

A Tale in the Desert III - Launches Saturday

Title's obvious, but many of you would like to know that A Tale in the Desert III is launching this Saturday, May 26. Rather than summarizing the announcement, I'm going to be lazy and post the whole thing... hooray for lazy!

(continue to the whole thing...)

New WoW Alliance Race Revealed

Yippee skippee... the big news has arrived. I'm sure many of you want to know so I'll just throw you the frickin' bone and you can gobble up the juicy news as you see fit: The draenei are the new playable alliance race in the upcoming Burning Crusade expansion for World of Warcraft.

Wonderful.. now can I get back to playing A Tale in the Desert? Or how about Sin: Emergence?? Whoops.. that's not a massivity-spiffy hoohah... sorry, but it's a damn fine game! Support cheap episodic content!!! (Content that I own, not that I have to pay every month to pretend that I own... until I don't pay one month.)

NCsoft's Aion screenshots & E3 movie

Take a gander at screenshots and the just-released E3 movie showing off NCsoft's Aion. I'm loving NCsoft's super-sweet high res movies. Very nice to watch this stuff all spiffy and big for a change! Anyway, this is a new fantasy online RPG that honestly looks in some ways like what the earlier incarnation of Tabula Rasa. Me wondering much if some content assets are finding use in this product? Maybe I'm seeing things? (Sorry, I don't have time to dig up examples... you can do that yourself and send me a note about what you find, though! Ain't I sweet to let you do that? "Yes" is the answer there.)

Star Wars Galaxies' Proposed Combat Changes

Sony is toying with major changes to the Star Wars Galaxies combat system again. Last time they did this, it caused quite a ruckus, so here's the preface to the forum post announcing some of the changes being tested:

Please keep in mind that although we have this prototype working internally it's entirely possible that nothing will be like it is described here or we may end up not adding this to the game at all. You guys wanted to get more of the behind-the-scenes scoop on development and here it is.

To me, that reads a lot like "read this stuff over and post about it while we look for massive flames and cursing to see if you like it or not." Actually a great thing to see, if that's what they're doing. From what I understand, the last massive combat overhaul changed the game so fundamentally that many existing players were known to just log off permanently. That's a good example of what can happen if you don't focus-test your changes enough... or it's an example of something else. :P

However, I'm not playing SWG right now and I only played it shortly after launch, so I don't know what any of this stuff even means! If you know what's going on in SWG and you want more info, go decipher it yourself. :)

Trojan targets World of Warcraft gamers

If you're a World of Warcraft player, you should know about this nasty little bit of news. There's a trojan virus thingy floating around the Net that targets WoW specifically, attempting to harvest login info for future exploitation... neat, eh? Some people are jerks.

Microsoft's New "Live Anywhere" Service Announced

Microsoft announced at E3 what had been hinted about for a long time... the Live Anywhere online gaming service will allow players on PC's (explicitly, Windows Vista boxes), Xbox 360's and mobile phones to all interact through the familiar Live platform. Well, it's not familiar to me since I own no Xbox-labeled machinery, but most of you know about it.

I figure this is big news for us since this may go a long way towards the type of cross platform connectivity that Final Fantasy XI pulled off with Playstation2 and PC. This could have some interesting side effects in the MMO space, as game communities become much more connected. Well.. I'm not sure what else to say about this. I have written and deleted a few paragraphs of thoughts on the subject, but I'm just going to stop now. :P

World of Warcraft Meets Google Maps

Map WoWHave you seen Google Maps? Do you play World of Warcraft? Wouldn't it be cool to navigate around the WoW world map using the slick Google Maps interface?? Yeah, I think so too... MapWoW.com has just that. They've used the Maps API and glued in the WoW world map, along with some handy information like travel paths and resource locations. Nifty!

You can decide how useful it actually is for you, but it sure is pretty sweet. Fun to tool around different places in Azeroth as seen from the orbiting satellite, I think.

ArchLord Beta Signup Now Live

News from Codemasters announces the opening of the beta sign up for the upcoming MMOG, ArchLord. I know you want it... you folks devour anything that says "beta". ...Well, I do too so I don't blame you. I'll be logging in right beside you, I'm sure. :)

It is with great pleasure that I can know announce the ArchLord Beta Sign-up has gone live! That's right, Beta Sign-up is now live! So head on over to http://www.archlordgame.com and register your interest in the Beta Sign-up! Whilst you are their be sure to check out the ArchLord Forums at and have a look around, ask some questions.
We are also running an ArchLord Beta Sign-up VIP program, so for all those that create fansites, are already members of guilds or are active community members will receive preferential access to the Beta program! So be sure to check out those forums, investigate the game and get creative!!!

Also, if you sign up by Monday morning, you'll have a chance to win a sketch of an ArchLord character made by the folks at MMOART. Here's the blurb on that from Tim "Mr. Ktat" Hodges, the community relations bloke for ArchLord:

I am happy to announce that courtesy of MMOART. <http://www.mmoart.com/>We are offering one lucky person who signs up for the Beta between today and Monday 9 am a personalised, unique sketch of a character of their choice from ArchLord!!

This is a really great prize and the guys at MMOART do some great work, check out their site for some awesome examples! So I'm sure you are all going to be hanging on to the edge of your seats for this. So good luck!!

Site maintenance

[update: Mostly upgraded, but still a few straggling bugs to squash. Thanks for any patience you've mustered, if you were around for the worst of the mess. And yes, I'm going to ditch this theme soon and get something looking much better... time, time, time. Thanks for visiting.]

more blah after jump...  (don't worry, it's all just as useless to read.) 

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