Category Archives: Asides

Vanguard — IT LIVES!

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All you naysayers out there, prepare to say aye and turn over your credit card: Vanguard: Saga O’ Heroes, in unison with Sony Online Entertainment LLC (SOE), announced details of the preorder program and the Collector’s & Guild Edition. We, the players, are free to choose our own destiny! Seriously, that’s true — says so right in the press release. Summarized — Regular edition $49.99, includes one month of play and the C & G Edition $89.99, includes THREE months of play, some real life stuff that would only appeal to nerds (Ya, you read that right, nerd.) and some in-game stuff: “… One of three Hero Cards each granting a unique in-game item (one per account) […] , your choice of an in-game magical wand to create fireworks or an in-game set of horseshoes with +speed to use once you get your first horse (one per account) and a Guild Kit which includes an in-game guild trophy that buffs stats for the entire guild plus ten 10-day buddy keys.” As I’m such a long-time subscriber to the Sony Collective, they’ll just charge my credit card for the C & G edition and ship it with a thank you note for the in-house launch party they’ve also charged to the card. Some day I’m going to cancel that EverQuest subscription and then they’ll be paying for their own pizza and beer. (P.S. Those ten 10-day buddy keys? Bold choice. Not sure I’d make that same choice if I was backing a lukewarm title, but perhaps VSOH has been significantly reworked since we last got a peek at their sepia adventure.) (Archive: Vanguard + SOE press release)

Decursing: Another Minigame within the Game!

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By now, every World of Warcraft player and his (or her) imaginary girlfriend (or sex toy) has heard about the impending removal of auto-targeting type mods from the game, ala Decursive. (Link to a good central thread with other links for you to chase.) Blizzard dripping tree, Drysc, summarizes the official position: “The general run-down is that we don’t want UI mods to be making combat decisions for a player, it should be in their hands and their responsibility to choose who and when to interact with the game. It borders on automation of gameplay, which is something we’re obviously very opposed to. Aside from that moral separation it ends up defeating the purpose of the challenges we’re implementing. With the release of the expansion and the game changing in some huge ways, it was the best opportunity to remove specific UI mod abilities.” Which, to me, could mean either: A. We decided AE curse encounters were stupid and are taking the game in a different direction, chillax noobs, or B. We still don’t learn from our predecessors’ mistakes. Since players are given only half the story … again …, I s’pose we’ll decide either: A. That wasn’t so bad, or B. God, that was stupid. (ALSO, could we get a firm fucking date on this expansion? Six-ish weeks away and we’re still guessing on live date?) (Archive: Player/Blizzard comments on disabling Decursive)