The Funeral of WoW Gold

There’s a perfect game for everyone. I truly and honestly believe this.

If you spend enough time in arcades, on the PC or in front of consoles, you’ll eventually come across a title that you can’t stop playing. Just ask Alec Baldwin about his “Galaga” obsession. You’ll go out and buy the latest shooter or beat-’em up, but eventually those games will collect dust and your favorite one will be living in your Nintendo DS or PlayStation 3.

It’s happened with my cousin and “StarCraft.” It’s the same way for my brother and “World of Warcraft.” For me, the only game with that kind of staying power is “Street Fighter II.” Over the past two decades, I’ve come to adore the classic and its countless revisions, and in that span, I’ve been turned off by the franchise’s prequels and sequel that added layers of unwanted complexities and forgettable characters.

With “Street Fighter IV,” I was crossing my fingers and hoping for a return to the classic gameplay of my childhood. But those looking for a return to “Street Fighter II” should prepare themselves. This new sequel won’t play exactly like the original; no, “Street Fighter IV” plays better.

Despite the long overdue face-lift to polygons, Capcom’s fighting game remains true to its roots. In fact, those who hadn’t kept up with the series or may have been in a coma for 15 years will feel at home with the speed and style of play. The timing for Ken and Ryu’s hadoken

combos are still there. The original World Warriors return with almost the same set of moves.

If you’re a fan, the game feels like a pair of worn tennis shoes, but after a couple of rounds, you’ll notice a few wrinkles. The biggest one is the Focus Attacks system that lets you parry and counter attack moves with the right timing. It also lets you interrupt attacks and link to more damaging combos.

The second new element is the Ultra Combos technique which can be performed after you take a pounding. A revenge meter will fill up and turn fiery, signaling that you can pull off the move and inflict massive damage. It’s a great equalizer in close matches if you’re behind and need a break to salvage a victory.

The only problem with Ultra Combos is that they need an opening and specific spacing to be effective. If a rival dodges or blocks, then you can kiss a chance at winning goodbye.

This may seem like minutiae for gamers who just want to go out there and knock some heads, but these changes make the action-oriented fighting game more cerebral. Then again, the “Street Fighter” series has always been about mind games against your opponent.

Dig deep enough into any fighting game and you’ll see what the genre is: It’s chess played at
750 mph. Every move has a counter. Every strategy has a weakness. Every player has a style. And you have to recognize this and react in an instant.

It took me a long time — more like hundreds of matches — to realize this, and after noticing the intricacies of the game, it takes you longer to see the benefit of that experience.

It certainly helped when playing through the different modes, such as the Arcade and Training.

But “Street Fighter IV” gets interesting when it comes to the Challenge Mode, which has a Trial component that teaches players combos. This is an essential addition that will instruct you in the finer points of the fighting system.

It will also help when you take your game online and challenge players around the globe. For the most part, lag isn’t too much of an issue for me, though it can be for those hard-core players who demand frame-specific timing. The Network Mode is easily the most addictive part of this game.

With arcades almost extinct, the only place gamers can get the thrill of head-to-head competition against unknown opponents is via the Internet. It’s this intensity against human foes that lies at heart of “Street Fighter’s” appeal, and Capcom does a good job keeping it interesting with titles and icons you earn through matchups and modes.

After years of clamoring for another sequel, Capcom has answered the bell. “Street Fighter IV” will please fans looking for that old-school feel in a new school package. It’s an update that will please newcomers and give battle-hardened veterans another chance to fall in love with the fighting games again.

A little less than a week ago, we here at Allakhazam were given the opportunity to hop into the world of Darkfall Online. I have to confess, however, that I really hadn’t heard much of this game. Made by indie developer Adventurine, Darkfall Online is touted to be the vicious combination of freestyle PvP, dynamically intelligent enemy AI and a rage inducing ‘full looting’ system. Full looting, by the way, means exactly that — players who are killed (in PvP or PvE), drop everything they were carrying, and other players can help themselves to whatever was dangling from the carcass at the time of its expiration (hell, they could have been the ones who killed him). While both Tamat and I had the chance to play, we worked very hard to keep our opinions to ourselves, thereby granting ourselves the fullest chance to experience Darkfall Online with no influence or expectations.

When I say no expectations, I mean that I really did not know anything about Darkfall or Adventurine before I trundled my way into the character creation screen. On the other hand, however, I must admit that I was expecting an MMORPG containing what I have become accustomed to expect — gear, questing, levelling up, nice graphics, a good amount of hand holding along the way, customizable skills and the vague feeling of World of Warcraftery (but obviously different). In this expectation, however, Darkfall confused me.

First, there really are no such things as ‘levels’ and ‘experience’ in Darkfall Online — merely the few scattered quests designed to make me hate all things Goblin-ish. Also note that I’m speculating here about the anti-goblin feelings, but I’ll explain how I came to this conclusion. First, goblin spawns in Darkfall Online are not ’scarce’ so much as they are pretty much nonexistent. Tamat noted that he ran around for at least an hour, and did not manage to find even one Goblin, though he did find some markings on his map that indicated Goblins were in the general vicinity (perhaps hiding). For myself, while I spent closer to two hours in searching for Goblins, I achieved a little bit more success.

I found five goblins. On top of each other.

In this way, I was very quickly introduced to the ‘dynamic’ AI aspect of Darkfall Online. Not only did these five Goblins very quickly pick up on my loud Dwarfish sneaking, but they all seemed to be incapable of missing with a single arrow, even when I realized halfway through my charge, that I was going to die before I got to them, and decided to charge back to town instead. Later on, when I spent about five minutes hiding behind a tree, I managed to cull one of the goblins from the herd and steal his bow and arrows. You can be certain that I met with considerably less success than my foes in sniping contests.

What this brings me to is the combat in Darkfall Online. Now, as a dabbler in all sorts of FPS and MMORPG games, I’d really like to emphasize just how unique the fighting system in Darkfall is. A lot of the brain numbing auto-attacking-while-mashing-1-and-2 syndrome that plagues many MMOs has been eliminated by Darkfall’s satisfying real time combat, but there is one glaring flaw that really prevented me from enjoying it to its fullest extent — the controls. While I made sure to not share this criticism with Tamat, believing that I was being picky and spoiled by World of Warcraft’s ultra-smooth, ultra-developed gameplay, one of the first things he pointed out was that the controls of Darkfall are clunky and awkward. At best.

Don’t get me wrong, I really do have to commend Darkfall for utilizing a combat system that has the potential to create a fantastically skill-intensive game. On the other hand, however, I couldn’t help but feel like I was swimming through molasses as I struggled to execute my combat strategies. While intense PvP and ridiculously difficult enemies are Darkfall’s greatest assets, the entire experience is marred by the feeling that it could be so much more. To turn this into an analogy, imagine spending the entire day with Superman and the only thing he does is prevent you from turning the corner too fast because he (assumedly) sees someone who might run into you. You know there’s the potential for some ridiculously enjoyable fun here, but it just… doesn’t seem to be working in execution.

 I also realize that there are players at top tiers who are really enjoying the PvP combat right now, but it felt like there was no incentive to get there. Typically when I start a new game, I end up getting really involved; I spend my time in classes and at work thinking about the game. With Darkfall, unfortunately, that passion is definitely missing.

In the end, Darkfall Online is an incredible concept that has a massive amount of potential. The problem again however, is that all of this potential will be completely lost if the game follows through with a bug-ridden launch. There are simply far too many glitches, problems, and, nothing to do that will really inhibit post launch interest. We all know what happens when you launch without a complete product. Darkfall Online represents a truly unique game that was developed without consulting the big book of World of Warcraft — if they muck up this launch, it could be just another fantastic idea that died before it lived.

Some of Yahoo’s 1996-era front pages have been saved in the Internet Archive. What’s interesting about them is what they lack. First, no e-mail: The first webmail site, Hotmail, launched in July of 1996. There was no instant-messaging software; the first big IM client, ICQ, hit the Web early in 1997. The MP3 file format was invented in the early 1990s, but very few people traded music in 1996–the files were too big to cram down modems, and Winamp, the first popular MP3 player app, was published in 1997. All these innovations hit the Web suddenly, defying prediction, and each completely altered how we’d spend our time online.

No Google, Facebook, YouTube, Wikipedia or Twitter, and retailers like Amazon were still so foreign that magazines and newspapers had to explain how the sites worked every time they wrote about them.

Still, despite all the silliness and dead ends and wretched page design, many elements of the 1996-era Web did survive and prosper.

Heck, I remember checking NBA box scores on ESPN.com in
1994 in high school. And that’s pretty much what I was doing last night, too.

What’s really interesting to me, though, is that the Web basically did fulfill all the wildest hopes people had.

Remember when DotComGuy was a big deal in 2000 when he set out to prove that he could buy and watch and read everything he wanted on the Internet without ever leaving his house?

Today, he’d be just another college freshman who never leaves his dorm and subsists on pizza ordered online and World of Warcraft.

In other words, I think if you could go back in time and tell your 1996 self what the Web looks like in 2009, you’d probably feel like everything had worked out pretty well.

What good is that Optimus keyboard without World of Warcraft? None good, I say, which is why it brings me great joy to see this homebrew WoW layout. It was created by one of the blokes at an Optimus Keyboard message board—message boards are the new salons—and is primarily for Warlocks.

As you can see, many (all? I’ve never played as a Warlock) of the icons from the game’s action bar are somewhere on the keyboard—I recognize a few spells on the left-hand side.

And you’d have to admit that this is merely an aesthetic mod, since when you’re playing the game it’s not like you’re staring at the keyboard. Nope, your eyes are fixated on the monitor, looking at damage meters and the like.

Still, fun, I guess. That’s the Internet’s raison d’etre: pointless, but fun stuff.

This year a World of Warcraft guild leader won an Oscar. Last year? Ditto.

Last year, Bill Westenhofer (pictured), visual special effects supervisor at effects house Rhythm & Hues, won an Academy Award for The Golden Compass in 2008. “I have an 80 mage on Kil’Jadeen,” Westenhofer told Kotaku. “Been playing since the original alpha testing days and am an officer in a casual raiding guild ‘Concordis’ on the KJ server.”

To recap: This year a WoW player won an Oscar for visual effects. Last year, a WoW player won an Oscar for visual effects. It’s like playing World of Warcraft is a requirement or something.

Adds Westenhofer, “There are lots of us out here with the WoW addiction…” No kidding!

A long, long time ago, in a time when Mountain Dew only came in one flavour and Bawls was just a sparkle in some guy’s eye, there were nerds. I’m talking traditional, long before ThinkGeek and J!nx: all-male, coke-bottle-glasses, acne-and-suspenders-type nerds. The nerds that get shoved into lockers, wedgied and were an eyesore to all they met. Then, through the magic of contacts and Proactiv, these nerds evolved into a more socially acceptable breed, some of this new breed even included … women.

Now, we see nerds as highly camouflaged, hiding out in the back of Web forums, disguising themselves as someone who has kissed someone other than their great aunt Marg, when in actuality they are still nerds. Some nerds even have boyfriends or girlfriends … or both (who am I to judge, really?). The point is that nerds have evolved once more to good-looking men and women of all living conditions (parent’s basement or their own), and quite possibly with a social life of sorts and even a job or two.

With the onslaught of nerd games available, even someone as cool and good looking as YOU can be one. Now I know what you’re thinking, “that would never be me”… Or would it??!!11@1? I know some of you have thought about it. It’s ok, I won’t tell anybody. Everyone goes through an experimental period in their life. But if you do decide to get your feet wet into the cool, sweet embrace of nerdom, I wanted to make sure you’re educated, get the right information and make the decision for YOU not for anyone else, you smooth operator, you. I’ll be pitting up two of the most infamous nerd games ever: Second Life by Linden Labs, and World of Warcraft by Blizzard Entertainment.

The first game we will look at is Second Life … Oops, I just called it a game. That’s your first mistake, call this a game, and you will be virtually beaten by SL fanatics who will explain to you that Second Life is a whole other life. A … second life, if you will. It’s basically a huge world that is created, maintained and policed by other nerds like you. They spend eight hours making a virtual guitar, three hours searching for one outfit and 15 hours trying to get the hell off of the newbie orientation tutorial island. Get this; they have their own fake currency, kind of like
Canada, only it’s worth more in real life. They’re called Linden dollars, and a bunch of them are equal to one real American dollar, which means you can buy Linden dollars with real money to buy fake crap in the world. Confused? Tell me about it. People can collect Linden dollars in Second Life and trade them in for cold, hard, American cash. There are no goals, no score and no winning; in essence it’s Pee Wee hockey only for nerds. You can buy houses, own land, and make your avatar just as hot as you would want to look in real life, but don’t.

Game developers looking for a new way to get their work in front of large audiences may soon have a new tool that could allow them to bypass the restrictive and risk-averse world of retailers.

A new service, known as InstantAction, is set to officially launch Tuesday. It aims to free developers, both inside and outside big publishers, from the traditional distribution constraints of selling PC- or console-based games.

The idea behind InstantAction is to provide developers with an end-to-end process for putting their games online, making them browser-based and making it possible for players to easily join their friends’ games at any time, without the need for a proprietary service like Microsoft’s Xbox Live.

And unlike the growing number of casual games, 2D virtual worlds, and Flash-based virtual-world platforms, InstantAction promises to support complete versions of just about any full-scale, or AAA, game a publisher wants to make available online. Brett Sayler, vice president of technology for InstantAction, said the service offers the first high-quality 3D games on the Web.

While the service’s technology could, in theory, support a game like “World of Warcraft” or any number of titles from a publisher like Electronic Arts, it’s more likely that, in the early going, at least, the service would be utilized by less-established publishers.

“The people this would likely appeal to are major publishers and game developers who,” said Sayler, “are unsatisfied with the gaming-(distribution) options available right now.”

Good match for Atari?
As a hypothetical example, Sayler pointed to Atari, which, in its current iteration–wholly owned by Infogrames, it is not the high-flying company it once was–has struggled to find substantial traction with retailers and consumers.

“Atari is a well-known brand with good (titles),” Sayler said, “fighting a losing battle at retail.”

Working with InstantAction, Sayler said, still speaking hypothetically, Atari could make some or all of its games available to consumers via the Web in a matter of months, bypassing big-box retailers and game-centric franchises in the process and, therefore, being able to concentrate more on building its games.

Another advantage that InstantAction offers its partners, Sayler said, is browser-based. Because the games are played–and authenticated–through a Web browser, they are intended to be much harder, if not impossible, to pirate, meaning that publishers can stop worrying about digital rights management. That, said Sayler, is something that has bedeviled PC game makers.

Proof of concept
For now, InstantAction is trying to prove its model by providing nine games its users can play right away–free of charge. And because the games are all streaming, they don’t require players to download client software or look for patches. Instead, they get the very latest versions of games each time they boot them up.

To Sayler, InstantAction could be a boon to developers who want to test gaming concepts right away, rather than worry about whether a retailer–or even a publisher–deems the title strong enough to invest the money to put in front of players.

“They get to try out new gaming concepts and (intellectual properties),” he said, “long before investing the kinds of money that is usually needed. It’s a dream for game developers and allows them to take creative risks.”

To be sure, just putting a game on InstantAction doesn’t guarantee in any way that players, or revenue, will come. That will still take marketing effort, which publishers or developers can do on their own sites–or in any other way they choose. But because the distribution of the game is taken care of, a big cost in the traditional model is removed.

And while plenty of PC games are already played online, most require a downloadable client. That means that the games are not portable, in the sense of allowing players to pick up where they left off on any machine. A browser-based game, however, would be playable on any machine with an Internet connection.

Party sessions
Another advantage of the InstantAction system is that any game session has a unique URL, which can be taken with players as they go, and can be shared among friends. That means that a group that enjoys playing together can form a “party,” said Andy Yang, general manager of InstantAction, and anyone who clicks on the URL joins the session in progress. This system can support up to 32 players at a time.

For now, InstantAction is solely browser-based, but the company is looking at adding Facebook and iPhone integration, Andy said. In that case, players would be able to battle against or with each other, regardless of which platform they were on.

InstantAction has been in beta for several months and, with its Tuesday launch, it is hoping to lure large numbers of new players, and with them, more publishers interested in making their games available via the Web. But this obviously presents a chicken-and-egg proposition, so InstantAction definitely has an uphill climb to prove that it can last.

InstantAction is free, but the company expects to make money with ads, premium services such as game customization and modification, and microtransactions. It also hopes to bring in revenue with licensing and revenue share, in the case of publishers or developers using the service on a white-label basis.

We know some hardcore “Perfect World International” gamers paid $50 for a mount in the free-to-play Chinese MMO, but an analyst broke down the game’s economic realities and told us how much people spend in an average month.

***

People spend $
15 a month to play “World of Warcraft”, but if your MMO content was completely free, as it is in “Perfect World International,” would you pay for items simply for convenience or a unique costume style?

We told you that some “Perfect World International” players spent $50 on a unique mount, but there was the possibility it was a one-time investment. Pacific Crest Securities analyst Evan Wilson said that’s not the case.

Parker follows Perfect World, the company that runs “Perfect World International,” and told MTV Multiplayer Chinese gamers spend an average of $10 a month on items in the game’s marketplace. These items are optional.

“The size of the market is pretty incredible and ‘WoW’ is also successful there,” explained Wilson. “I would say that there are certainly lots of people who would be willing to pay for this type of content both here and around the world.”

They’re willing to pay in China. Are you?

The9 Ltd. said late Monday its fourth-quarter profit fell by 48 percent as the Chinese online game operator recorded a $3.5 million impairment charge from an investment in an online game development company in South Korea.

The Shanghai-based company, which operates Blizzard Entertainment’s popular “World of Warcraft” game, said net income for the three months ended Dec. 31 fell to $6.5 million, or 24 cents per share, from $12.6 million, or 43 cents per share, in the same period a year ago.

Revenue fell 4 percent to $59.4 million from $62.1 million.

Analysts surveyed by Thomson Reuters expected a profit of 49 cents per share in the latest quarter on revenue of $64.72 million.

For the full year, The9 (nasdaq: NCTY - news - people ) reported a profit of $51.1 million, or $1.84 per share, up 45 percent from the company’s full-year 2007 profit of $35.3 million, or $1.28 per share. Revenue rose 33 percent to $250.4 million from $187.6 million.

The9 released earnings after its shares rose $1.02, or about 8.4 percent, to close at $13.22. In after-hours trading, the stock fell 92 cents, or 7 percent, to $12.30.