World of Warcraft was crowing about 500k people signing up to beta-play. (Here’s a cursory link to their main page — they’re too cool for permalinks.)

More than 40 servers have been deployed! I know this to be true, because I gave up on my originally-selected server to play on Server 40-something.

The lag was unplayable on the other … kill, loot, kneel for five minutes in a looting position, blood sprays out of my character for no apparent reason, click OK for graveyard, go get another “refreshment”, talk to the neighbor, come back to computer, wait another 2 minutes for graveyard arrival, wonder how I was getting sloshed so quickly.

I’m getting old, man! Just don’t have the same tolerance I used to.

So I gave up, for my liver’s sake.

Continue reading →

More legal news … because when someone is suing someone else, I want to be your source for rumor, speculation and fake reporting. Marvel Comics is suing NC Soft’s City of Heroes for copyright violations (allegedly, people!) committed by CoH players in naming their toons.

You know, like the guy who named his toon The Hulk. I actually ran into that guy (probably Hulk #4 of 38) — was funny as hell.

Marvel has a lot of hope. This won’t go anywhere. (Hello, damages, where are you?) And what would they have gaming companies do? Have a name filter the size of Texas that will bar names like Tide, Bounty and Little Friskies?

Now if the Hulk dude was running around in CoH asking people to touch his monkey … TOUCH IT!! … then they might have something here.

As of this writing, via: Terra Nova, Ubiq’s Zen of Design, Kotaku, and Lum’s Broken Toys.