Category Archives: Noteworthy

How to Juice Your Game Screenshots, Part I

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If your game screenshots aren’t everything you’d want them to be — brilliant and sharp — I’m going to share a few tweaks on how to juice them up.

I use Photoshop, but the tweaks are easily translated to almost any other intermediate or advanced image editing software. I’ll explain exactly what my adjustments do so you can hunt around in your chosen program to do the same.

A caveat: Photoshop and other advanced editors (e.g. Paint Shop Pro) allow the use of layers to perform image adjustments. You can play around with your adjustments to get a desired effect and if worse comes to worse, you can delete the layer and try again. This isn’t possible with most intermediate-type editors (e.g. IrfanView). If you’re using an editor without layer-capability, try out your adjustments incrementally and Edit » Undo adjustments that don’t work well.

We’ll talk about IrfanView and other intermediate editors tomorrow, Photoshop/advanced editors today.

Here’s an example to work with, from World of Warcraft’s Blade’s Edge Mountains, a couple of dragonkin met their untimely deaths on the side of the mountain.

Painful Deaths (unaltered)

And here’s the juiced version of the same shot, after I applied my usual Photoshop adjustments.

Painful Deaths

Continue reading →

EBay Rebans Game Auctions

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I wish people would stop FREAKIN’ OUT about eBay’s recent press event — eBay is delisting auctions of game property again. Did I say again? I meant STILL. (Fucking duh, people.)

An incomplete timeline and history lesson (because although the blog never lies, back then, the blog didn’t exist):

October 1999 – EverQuest’s handlers, 989 Studios, Verant Interactive and, what would become SOE, Sony Computer Entertainment of America, Inc. forbids players from selling EQ’s virtual property to other players. The collective EQ population thinks, “wtf, people are doing that? How can I do that?” Also in that article: at the time of its writing, there were over 1500 eBay auctions for EQ items and characters (possibly true) and EQ was released February 1999 (not true — it was March 1999).

April 2000 – Sony decides that “forbid” is a sissy word and BANS the sale of EQ items and characters from one player to another. The noob population thinks, “wtf, people are doing that? How can I do that?” EBay auctions are still going strong, although “Smedley (of Verant, later of Sony) said that he plans to ask eBay to pull the game items off its site. eBay spokesman Kevin Pursglove said eBay would likely agree to do so.”

January 2001 – EBay bans the sale of virtual items and characters on their auction site. (It’s even in fucking Wikipedia, fercrissakes.) The EQ EBay crowd moves to playerauctions.com and/or rewords their Ebay auctions to duck around the new rules (i.e. Seller is NOT offering virtual items or characters, seller is auctioning his/her time to acquire the items or to build the character).

The more casual eBayers started working with the private, professional virtual property companies (IGE, et al) — players would receive less money for their items and characters, but it was considered safer and faster than working out a private sale or sweating out an eBay or playerauctions sale. That changeover went down sometime in 2003, if memory serves. Certainly by the time Star Wars Galaxies was released (June 2003), IGE and its brethren were the preferred methods for casual sellers and buyers.

Which brings us to January 2007’s press event. Yawn.

Today’s Lessons:

#1. Apparently, the internet population completely turns over every few years and what was old is new again.

#2. Please people, if you want to dabble in virtual trade, seek the counsel of a guildmate or e-friend who has some experience. They can guide your noob ass through the maze that is the Virtual Goods Black Market.

#3. You can get “it” on eBay, unless “it” is virtual property. Still.

#4. When eBay announces they’re banning auctions of Vanguard items and characters, let’s all agree not to FREAK OUT. Thank you.

Playing Warcraft Around the World

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Here’s an interesting debate on the World of Warcraft forums about a player who games from around the world because of business travel: “Play WoW on business trips and get suspended?”

You might think by the title that he got suspended from work for exploring the Tower of Azora with a group of night elves — not so. He was suspended from Warcraft for exploring the Tower of Azora from multiple IP addresses.

Let’s assume the Original Poster is telling the truth, and I’m inclined to do so, what should a MMOG company’s policy be with accounts that are accessed by multiple IPs? Clearly there are legitimate, TOS-compliant reasons when a player would use several IPs to access his/her account. Conversely, there are non-legit, TOS-breaking reasons also.

Suspend first, argue later? Ask first, suspend later? Say nothing, spy on the player at the Tower of Azora?

I’m leaning towards flagging the account and looking for other suspicious behavior connected to the account.

My opinion, this shouldn’t be a high priority for investigations. Realize, however, that I’m in the “I don’t care if people sell/buy virtual currency and accounts” camp. People in the “I think selling/buying virtual currency and accounts is wrong” camp might consider this a higher priority and some collateral damage is expected and acceptable.

I’ll qualify that with “FOR THE MOST PART, I don’t care if people sell/buy virtual currency and accounts camp”. I’ll illustrate with a high quality graphic.

Gold Sellers Chart

Ya see? We’re not so different you and I. (In fact, I used to be much more fundamentalist in my view on IGE/Ebaying game stuffs. Over the years, I moved towards the “fuckit, I don’t care” side of the high quality graphic.)

Back to the original question: how to limit collateral damage when on a seek-and-destroy TOS-violators mission?

For future reference and for the firewalled:
(All Sizes ยป Original, for larger text)
Page image of WoW Forum thread