Random thought of the day

Star Trek cat likes popcorn too !

Tech 4 source code soon

The source code that powered Doom 3 and Quake 4 will be up for download by the end of the year.

I'll been keen to peek in on it to find out a few things once its realased.

Wow subs continue to decline, Morhaime Speaks

"As our players have become more experienced playing World of Warcraft over many years, they have become much better and much faster at consuming content," he recently said.

"And so I think with Cataclysm they were able to consume the content faster than with previous expansions, but that's why we're working on developing more content."

Yesterday, Morhaime made clear Blizzard’s response to this trend. The company pledged to flood the game with new content as a matter of urgency.

And he misses the point. For all its 'epic' 'huge' 'expansive' ness, Cata was small. They made level 1-60 take a week and then made 80-85 take less.

The problem for me, was bugs and the same old stuff I had been doing for years. I never made it to 85. The whole story and quest chains were just boring. There was the same old bottleneck quests where you had to wait. Mobs were respawning in less than 5 seconds so just getting anywhere in those bottlenecks was a pain. Some quests never appeared for me even though I follow the chain correctly.

And Deepholm was just a huge hole in the grown of boring stuff.

While the game does need more content, it needs to be real continue. Why do I feel they are thinking more Raids, dungeons and daily quests. What the game needs is new ways to play it. Epic public quest zones, housing, boats, control point pvp. More open pvp zones with objectives.

What we don't want is ' do these quests once a week for 7 days so you can do more repetitive quests cause we are lazy ', eg the tournament.

Blizzard trademarks Mists of Pandaria

Wow Expansion, new game, Titan ?

Guess we have to wait for Blizzcon.

Dota 2 at Gamescon

The first showing of Dota 2 will be at Cologne's five-day trade show where Valve will have a $1 million tournament.

As far as I am aware Dota 2 will still be free to play and explains why they have been pushing the whole free to play on steam.

This might be the first Dota I'll try.

New Guildwars 2 info soon

Guildwars 2 is going to Gamescom in europe on the August 17-21. With the biggest playable demo so far:

• Seven professions – Play all seven professions that we’ve revealed so far: engineer, thief, guardian, necromancer, ranger, warrior, and elementalist.

• Charr starter experience – For the first time, you can forge your destiny as a member of the Iron, Ash, or Blood Legion in our charr starter area. You can also choose to play the human and norn starting experience as well.

• Mid level demo – As always, we’ve prepared a higher level demo experience for players who want a challenge. Face powerful Orrian enemies on land, engage them in battle underwater and face off against a new boss.

• Sylvari and asura – Did I mention that you’ll be playing sylvari and asura characters for this high level content? Yes, for the first time, players will be able to get their hands on these unique races – believe me, they are impressive!

• Character appearance customization – Also for the first time, you’ll be able to play around with our character appearance customization feature and control the way your character looks.

• PvP – Last but certainly not least, we’re premiering Guild Wars 2 Player vs Player (PvP) at gamescom! Swing by the ESL booth and head to the Guild Wars 2 area to get your exclusive hands-on PvP experience. Also check out our periodic exhibition matches that pit our valiant team of ArenaNet developers against the European guild BOON Control on the ESL center stage.

There should be tones of new videos and info during this week. I can't wait.

Diablo 3 - Cash Auctions

First off, what the ?

Don’t Need It? Put It Up For Auction!
Nearly everything found in the game, including gold, can be exchanged with other players directly or through the auction house system. So say you’re a witch doctor and you’ve just found an incredibly rare, incredibly powerful axe that only barbarians can use. In the previous Diablo games your best option might have been to sell the axe to an in-game vendor, but in Diablo III, you now have the ability to list that axe in the auction house for your fellow barbarian players to bid on. And you know another player will probably appreciate the true value of that axe more than some heartless vendor who’ll likely just melt it down for scrap….

 Even gold ?

Then I saw this:

The Choice Is Yours
Use of either the real-money or gold-based auction house is completely optional -- that decision can be made on a per-item basis, and both versions of the auction house are functionally the same. In addition, players have the option to simply sell the items they obtain to in-game vendors for gold. They can also trade items to other players through a direct character-to-character trading system in the game in exchange for gold, other items, or just an overwhelming sense of goodwill.

Real money for in game items. Its supposed to be only for the auction house and its optional but what the hell has Blizzard become. Its become Blizzard ActivisiSUN this is just a vailed layer of the pay to win model and my interest in Diablo 3 is almost all but gone. The players make no money out of these auctions and Blizzard just pockets the profits themselfs.