The Wizard of Duke Street Details

Doctor Who: Billie Piper to return as Rose
2007-11-27 13:50:23
The BBC has just announced that Billie Piper is to return to Doctor Who as Rose Tyler. According to the short article, "She will star in three episodes of the sci-fi drama". For the record, I really like Rose, but I do not want to see her back in the series. That parallel universe was supposed to be closed off - definitely, finally, and for all time. To re-open it makes a complete mockery of continuity in the show - nobody's guaranteed dead, nobody's guaranteed missing, anyone can come back if the writers just decide it'd be fun to trot through the same plots and situations again. Guh. I know I'll watch it anyway... ...
Doctor Rose

EVE Online Competition: Rags to Riches
2007-11-21 19:01:00
Win A 30-day Game Time Code for EVE Online! Welcome to the first EVE Online Rags-to-Riches Competition. Your mission, should you choose to accept it, will be to take a 14-day trial account from the starting conditions to as much money as you can raise. You can get that by missioning, trading, pirating, scamming, or whatever you like. Read on for further details, and to find out how to enter.There are two main rules. 1) You must not transfer money from another EVE character of your own, nor may you accept gifts from friends. Nor, indeed, may you buy ISK for real currency or GTCs. To make sure of this, you will be required to provide a record of wallet transactions from EVE's My Character section on the website. These are to be downloaded and emailed to me. 2) You must write up, in good detail, what you're doing to get your pile of ISK. If you have a blog, you can publish it there, and if not, I'll be happy to post your writings here. You should provide at least two chunks of writing, ...
Competition Rags Riches

Podkilled
2007-11-18 20:18:59
Dear Diary: Today I got podkilled for the first time ever. I am not precisely filled with joy, but I'll live. Again. In EVE, getting pod-killed is the "worst death" - getting your ship destroyed is one thing, getting your pod destroyed is entirely another, as it takes your implants with it, and dumps your consicousness back in a new clone. Fortunately, I had checked before heading into Decon, the 0.4 security system the storyline agent had sent me to from Balle, that I had a good clone, and that I could afford to replace the Myrmidon if I lost it. In hindsight, it might have been wiser to scout with something more disposable first, but I really was not expecting to see a six-battleship gatecamp on the other side. This was the STCS Star Pike going down: 2007.11.18 18:40 Victim: Atrakus Alliance: NONE Corp: SierraTangoCorp Destroyed: Myrmidon System: Decon Security: 0.4 Involved parties: Name: Bellum Eternus Security: -10.0 Alliance: NONE Corp: Death of Virtue Ship: Hyperion Weapo ...

Doctor Who: Children in Need, Tonight
2007-11-16 13:55:30
Just a reminder that the Children in Need segment of Doctor Who, featuring David Tennant and Peter Davison, is on today. It'll be shown at 9pm GMT, and should be online on the BBC website from 9:30. ...
Children Doctor

City Diorama
2007-11-15 13:59:37
A colleague in work - a mysterious, "sexy and exciting colleague", he says, and who am I to disagree - pointed me at this city diorama. It's absolutely magnificent. Scroll down, too, for work in progress pictures. And according to some discussion on the second page, both the buildings themselves and the moulds could be bought for what seems like entirely reasonable money, considering. I have neither room nor skills for this kind of thing, but I'd love to be able to do it. ...
City

EVE: Myrmidon II, Star Pike
2007-11-14 19:20:14
The STCS Star Pike, replacing the STCS Star Sword, has now survived two Blockade missions - the Level II mission that destroyed her predecessor. I, however, have not learned to recognise the name of the mission and connect it to the feelings of pain and hurting that happen as dozens of tough destroyers and frigates whale away on the poor battlecruiser.At one point last night, I was trying to warp out to a safe spot to do some repairs, and the amount of red was increasing at a rate where I was almost afraid to watch - a bunch of new spawns had come in, and were doing silly amounts of damage. As the shooting stopped, I was warping out with 1% structure, and nothing else left at all. The problem - or one of the problems - is with the frigates. I haven't yet been able to identify whether it's my particular kind of damage isn't hurting them, or they're just incredibly tough, or what, but it takes longer to take down a Guristas Guardian Guard frigate (that can't be what they're called, but ...
Star

Marvel Going Online
2007-11-14 14:10:55
Marvel, according to Yahoo News, are putting comics online. They're starting with old issues, and they're not free, but it's an interesting step nonethless. I don't have the interest level in old Marvel comics to pay that much for them. I'm sure there are plenty of people out there who do, though, and it'll be interesting to see if this takes their business in new directions. EDIT: Actually, the Reuters version of the story says 250 of them will be free, out of 2500. ...

Morrowind MMO?
2007-11-09 15:01:08
There's been a persistent rumour that there's going to be an Elder Scrolls MMO - the series that Daggerfall, Oblivion, and Morrowind were part of. And now, Destructoid has noticed that the elderscrollsonline.com domain has been bought by Zenimax, Bethesda's parent company. The game hasn't been officially announced, and they're saying that " no such announcement has been made" - but really, it's a pretty obvious thing for them to try out. ...

WoW: Wrath of the Lich King Preview
2007-11-08 13:46:29
There's an article on 1up about the Wrath of the Lich King expansion for World of Warcraft. I've set this expansion as the thing that will get me back into WoW, at least briefly, and one of the points in its favour for me is that the developers have learned from The Burning Crusade.One quote that really interests me is from Chris Metzen: "It [The Burning Crusade] had a lot of high-concept ideas, high-concept environments," he says, calling to mind the psychedelic mushrooms of Zangarmarsh, the tragic majesty of Tempest Keep, "but other than some really nice moments, there was nothing really personal about it." and then: "We want to add some layers of psychology that put you in strange moral situations of how you fight the good fight that mimic some of Arthas' own experiences.... By the time you reach level 80 [the expansion's new level cap], by the time you stand toe-to-toe with this bastard, do you still have your pretty principles and highfalutin morality, or is it a mirror reflect ...
Preview Wow

D&D: Dungeon Survival Guide
2007-11-08 13:38:44
One of the new releases for D&D is the 3.5 Dungeon Survival Guide. People were expecting this to be something like the 1st Edition Dungeoneer's Survival Guide, possibly with an added dash of something like the recent Cityscapes material. Instead, it's basically a glorified catalogue of WotC modules. The Amazon reviewers are not impressed. I suspect that a lot of WotC's efforts are now going into 4th Edition, and that we may well have seen the end of the useful 3.5 stuff. ...
Guide Survival

Gaelcon 2007 Review
2007-10-30 12:48:50
Gaelcon is over for another year, and I had a great time. I can't tell you how the organised events went, because as usual, I didn't play in any of them. But I hung around, talked to lots of people, played the EVE card game, bought stacks of cards for it, bought Monte Cook's World of Darkness, and generally enjoyed things.The charity auction raised some €34,000. That thing never fails to amaze me, both in terms of the amount of money raised and what Colm gets away with as the auctioneer (although this year he got a well-documented slap from one of his assistants). It was an excellent evening, and next year, I am resolving that I am going to actually acquire something from it - I've bid on things a few times, but the bidding always shoots past what I can actually pay for the items I want. Bidding crossed the €1000 mark on several items, and hit €2000 on two - a pillow accompanied by entry to any gaming convention, anywhere, and two of the three original "brown book" D&D b ...
Review

EVE: War Analysis
2007-10-23 15:00:59
The normally spam- and posturing-filled Corporation, Alliance and Organization Discussion boards on EVE have recently been shocked by the posting of several excellent analytical articles by a poster who is very nearly anonymous. War Analysis Part 1: The Death of Alliances War Analysis Part 2: What it is good for? War Analysis Part 3: CCP Sucks War Analysis Part 4: Coldest of all cold monsters And here's an interview on EVE-Tribune with the writer. This is brilliant stuff; proper journalistic war analysis applied to EVE. It's far better written, let alone better researched, than anything I could write. ...
Analysis War

LotRO Book 11 Patch Notes
2007-10-22 18:34:14
Patch notes are now up for Book 11 of Lord of the Rings Online, and I approve greatly. Here're some highlights:Housing! Finethalion the Elven Loremaster is already saving for his Dwarven House. Customizable Chat " User-defined chat channels (up to 4 slots) are now available!" - This is something I really missed from WoW; the ability to create channels for specific groups of people, not necessarily in the same guild, fellowship, or whatever. Lore-master New lynx pet! And non-combat critter pets as well. I've always ended up playing pet classes (well, ever since I gave up on tanking when I left DAoC). Pet rez! Although I'm not sure how often I'll get to use this; usually when the bear goes down, I'm next. And I'll be interested to see what the benefits of the "Back from the brink" spell have over just re-summoning. And also very important: "It is now possible to change the appearance of your lore-master pets!" - so I'm looking forward to that too. Other And there seem to be pile ...
Book Lotro Notes

Work as Game
2007-10-22 14:16:00
The BBC's coverage of MMOs and virtual worlds has been getting more enthusiastic of late; either they've hired a gamer, or they've noticed that articles on games get huge amounts of traffic. Some of the reports are a bit on the breathless side, like the one about multi-world avatars. However, there's a new one about the use of MMO gameplay models in the workplace. So can I be a level 70 webmaster?Two elements of gameplay have been put into use, according to the article. One is... "a virtual currency element to e-mail in a bid to help people cope with information overload. Anyone sending a message adds some of their limited supply of virtual coins, called Serios, to show how important they consider that e-mail to be. It was a more finely grained grading system than the low, medium or high importance flags found in most e-mail programs[...]. It had other benefits too[...] It revealed not just the flow of messages but also started to show who people pay attention to and who did a g ...
Game Work

A Weeked of LotRO
2007-10-22 14:01:00
In anticipation of Thursday's release of Book 11, the new content patch for LotRO, I figured I should make some effort to get some cash together. I won't be able to afford a house immediately, but I'd like to have more than a couple of coppers when they become available.So I logged on on Saturday evening, and spent a bit of time charging around the near edge of the Lone Lands doing kill-ten-rats style quests, and then going through my vault (already jammed, since I'm a packrat in any game) to see what I actually needed to keep, and what could go to the vendor or the auction house. There's some auction house behaviour there that I don't understand - or rather, I understand it, I just can't see why people are so dim about it. When you go to post an auction, the system provides you with a base price. For an apprentice-level recipe, for instance, that's 1 silver and 67 coppers. This is the same price as you would get if you sold it to a vendor, which is fair enough; if they have to list ...
Lotro

End-game Musings
2007-10-12 14:38:44
There's a fine post on Hardcore Casual about Endgame Types. Syncaine characterises the various forms as: Some had raiding (WoW, LoTRO), some had PvP (DAoC, AC on Darktide, Lineage) and others left it open-ended (UO, EVE). and his main conclusion is: This all makes me wonder if a game would be better if the developer focused exclusively on just one source of end-game. I'm tempted to say that the real success of an end-game can be measured by how different it is from the progressive part of the game. EVE effectively has no end-game, so there's no switch from "levelling" to whatever. Where DAoC and WoW fell down for me was the switch from the levelling to, in WoW's case, raiding and faction grinds, and in DAoC's, artifact camping and RvR. I was actually reasonably keen on RvR in DAoC, but you couldn't be competitive in it unless you had a decent set of artifacts, and camping the artifact mobs was possibly the dullest thing I have ever persisted in doing. It can be argued that PvP i ...
Game

LotRO Player Housing in Book 11
2007-10-11 14:11:14
Lord of the Rings Online: Shadows of Angmar will be getting its next content patch, Book 11, in November. While there are many aspects of it that are interesting - the addition of the Balrog, and new pets for the Loremaster class - the one that really grabs my attention is Player and Kinship Housing. This is something I really enjoyed in DAoC, and always missed in WoW - it's been "coming soon" since WoW was released.There's an article on Book 11 on TenTonHammer, from which I quote: "...not only will player housing be available, but Kinship housing as well. In my mind, I could hear LotRO fans everywhere cheering with glee; player housing is amazingly appropriate for the gameplay style of LotRO and I imagine a vast majority of the LotRO players will be interested in any sort of housing available to them, Kinship and player alike. "We've established a place where people love to be," Steefel said. "Now we're trying to give the players a chance to live there." Cody "Micajah" Bye listens i ...
Book Housing Lotro

Writing Sample: Nebbish's Demon
2007-10-10 14:08:51
This is a writing sample for a project I'm considering setting up.There were rats in the bag. Nerby was sure of it, he could see the corners twitching. He leaned out of the bunk, grabbed it by one strap, and overturned it. Cutlery and a tin cup fell out among the tokens and rags and bandages, and clattered on the floor, but there were no rats. Nearby sighed and lay back again, and closed his eyes, pretending to be asleep as the guard looked in. "Bag fell over," she called back down the hall, "he's still asleep, though." Heavy footsteps, and then the physicians's low, precise voice. "He shouldn't be. He should be twitching, even in his sleep, and that should have woken him up." The footsteps came closer, and Nerby felt the radiated heat of the chest grille as the physician leaned over him. "Wake up, Master Nebbish. Wake up." He opened his eyes, pretending to be waking, and tried not to stare at the blank glass eyes. "Ph-physician," he murmured, "what time is it?" "Seventeen minutes aft ...
Demon Writing

Wrath of the Lich King Beta Phishing
2007-10-03 20:12:38
There is a phishing scam being sent out with a hook of beta participation in World of Warcraft's next expansion, Wrath of the Lich King.This takes the form of a reasonably well formatted mail (broken in gmail, though, which was the first thing that seemed off to me). It purportedly comes from "WotLK Development Team <wotlkBETA@blizzard.com>". Actual headers are below, for anyone interested. It has the text: Greetings, You have been selected by Blizzard Entertainment to take part in our special World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King BETA testing. To participate simply log into your account at the special World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King site at http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/wotlkbeta . After logging in and confirming your identity, you will be taken to a download page for the Worlf of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King BETA Client. We thank you for your help and participation in this process, as customer feedback is one of our most powerful tools in creating an outst ...
Beta Phishing

EVE: Myrmidon Go Boom
2007-10-03 12:55:29
I finally lost a ship in EVE - the first since I re-upped two months ago - and it had to be the Myrmidon, the pride of my fleet. I was flying a Level II mission, Recon (1 of 3), and starting to think about when I could get Level IIIs. A few minutes into this one, my drones were starting to get depleted, and since I, like most Gallente, fight drone-heavy, this wasn't good. I suspect I had the wrong size out to take on the mix of cruisers and destroyers in that mission. Anyway, the last three drones got popped in a rush, and the rats were starting to concentrate on me. I warped out to fetch more drones from my station stash - the mission site was actually in Oursulaert, which is my current mission base anyway. I loaded up drones, did some quick repairs (I'd just barely dipped into armour), and warped back. Warping back in dropped me right in the middle of the bad guys, and in retrospect, I should really have warped back out and in again. But I launched the drones and started firing. The ...

D&D 4E: Points of Light
2007-09-26 18:41:53
There's an article up on the new Dragon/Gleemax thing (you need to register and log in to see it, sorry) about one of the concepts that the designers are using for 4th Edition Dungeons & Dragons. Here's a quote, which summarises it: one of the new key conceits about the D&D world is simply this: Civilized folk live in small, isolated points of light scattered across a big, dark, dangerous world. Most of the world is monster-haunted wilderness. The centers of civilization are few and far between, and the world isn’t carved up between nation-states that jealously enforce their borders.And that's rather a pity, in my mind. Not because they're going in with some baseline assumptions about the genre, because they have to do that, but that assumption in particular. A great deal of the best new fantasy out there, both in games and novels, deals with more civilised worlds. Certainly, there are a lot of very fine fantasies, from Lord of the Rings on down to China Miéville's The Scar and Iro ...

EVE Blogs & Sites
2007-09-26 14:18:26
For some reason, there's been a wave of new EVE blogs and sites lately. This is a listing of blogs and sites I read regularly that deal, partly or exclusively, with EVE Online. Chimps in Space Crazy Kinux Deranged Carebear EVE Online @ gamersinfo.net EVE-Pirate EVE Tribune Exploring EVE Online Finraer's Folly Just a Girl and her Thorax Miner with Fangs Ramblings The Ancient Gaming Noob Votrian's EVE Blog Updated 27th September, 2007 If you've any suggestions for additions, let me know. ...
Blogs

JMS does Star Wars?
2007-09-25 15:37:12
Tipped off by someone who'd prefer to remain anonymous, I draw your attention to a post by J. Michael Straczynski, and some commentary concerning George Lucas. Picking out the relevant bits, from the Lucas commentary: Regarding the live action series, Lucas said they'll first start writing it in about a month from now. He continued: "The live-action [series] is not the movie. It's the Star Wars universe, but it's characters from the saga who were [previously] minor, and it follows their stories. It's set between [movie episodes] III and IV, when the Empire has taken over." and then from JMS himself: For the last year, very much under the radar, I've been working with two film makers who have created some of the biggest SF movies in the last twenty years on a television project. (I can't reveal their identities, but pick any three of their movies and you have box office of over two billion dollars.) We've been quietly writing and creating the first three scripts for a new SF serie ...
Star Star Wars Wars

Heroes Season Two Preview Clip
2007-09-21 15:04:00
There's a clip on youtube of preview bits of Season 2 of Heroes. Naturally, this contains spoilers. (If you're viewing this in a feed or on Livejournal, that clip almost certainly won't work - apologies! Come to the site and see it.) ...
Heroes Preview

Casual Progression in LotRO
2007-09-20 14:43:33
Don't get me wrong, I really like Lord of the Rings Online, and I'm not about to stop playing. There is, however, something oddly... missing. I'm not even sure that it's a bad thing that it's not there. That something is the drive to progress, to level up. I don't mind, at all, that Finethalion the Loremaster is level 16, and has been level 16 for two weeks, and doesn't look likely to progress to level 17 for at least another week.This is unfamiliar. My experience with other MMOs has been a drive to level up, to get to the next benchmark level, to get to the next cool thing. The level where you get a mount, the level where you can teleport, or summon people to your location, or get the next cool pet. There was a little of this in LotRO; I wanted to get to level 10 to try the Monster Play option, and wanted to get Finethalion to 14 so he could summon a bear. Now, however, I'm not aware of any other threshold point like that. I have the raven and the bear; there are no other pets. I'm n ...
Lotro Progression

Areae launch Metaplace
2007-09-19 14:23:38
Raph Koster's company, Areae, have finally accounced what they're working on, a product called Metaplace. It appears to be - basically - a combination of interactive website and MMO, allowing users to build their own games. It's pretty open, and as yet, pretty undefined. Raph has a reputation for knowing what he's at, though, so I'll be following this with interest. ...

Torchwood Series 2 Start Date
2007-09-17 18:33:26
Something has finally been announced - or, really, just said casually - with regard to the launch of the second season of Torchwood, and it appears it's not going to be until January 2008, according to The Stage. Julie Gardner is quoted as saying: Last year, we started filming in March and we were on air with 13 episodes from late September, which was just so, so hectic. And we didn’t really have enough time – it was absolutely frantic from day one of prep, it was all hands on deck. And so, it just works for the BBC2 schedule that we can go in January. So it’ll just give us a little bit more time in our post-production. Which would be lovely, because we were delivering an episode every single week for transmission. It was incredibly tight. So it was just as well we didn’t have any last-minute technical difficulties last year! So the next thing we're going to see of the Whoniverse will be the Doctor Who Christmas Special with Kylie Minogue, then... ...
Date Series

Pirates of the Burning Sea Economy
2007-09-16 22:28:57
I've just spent half an hour reading up on Pirates of the Burning Sea's economy. It sounds like they're going to produce something very close to my Holy Grail of MMOs, an EVE-like economy. Well, my ideal is an EVE-like fantasy economy, but this is close enough to please me, and if PotBC takes off, we're likely to see more games on this model. Trinity, on female-gamer.com, has a long discussion about the possibilities of the player-driven economy, based on a post by Isildur on the Pirates of the Burning Sea site. Tobold doesn't agree that such an economy will work, but I'm pretty sure Tobold has never played EVE, where just such an economy is in full working swing. And then there's a fantastic post by one of the PotBS developers about the invisible price auction model they're going to be using. From barely knowing the game existed to definite enthusiasm in half an hour; that has to be a record! ...
Economy Pirates Sea

Shaking the WoW Addiction
2007-09-16 20:35:57
While I have the remnants of a three-month subscription winding down, I haven't logged in to WoW in over a month. Most of my MMO time is going into EVE Online, and a bit into LotRO, neither of which seem to make the same demands on my time. There seem to be a lot of people leaving WoW around now, and many of them are looking back and asking, "Was I crazy?". There's a particularly fine example on Hardcore Casual. I know that of our - already small - guild on Argent Dawn, at least five people have jumped to LotRO, and I know another four from an allied guild have done the same. In fact, nearly everyone that I regularly grouped with in WoW is now playing LotRO. The complaint is always the same - a lot of pressure to reach the end-game, and then the end-game isn't up to much. I'm starting to wonder if Blizzard aren't going to have to start making some changes if they want to hang on to customers... ...
Addiction Wow

EVE: Walking in Stations
2007-09-13 14:57:37
There's a video on youtube of samples of the upcoming ambulation material in EVE. It looks considerably better than most existing MMOs, and it's perfectly in tune with the gritty feel of EVE. And many of you will be pleased to note that both the male and female avatars in this video are perfectly sensibly dressed. Not a space bikini to be seen. ...

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