Things Fall Apart

I’ve been hearing a lot of PC gamers unhappy with the industry of late. They’ve cleaved themselves to a few games as the next great hope for PC Gaming; perhaps none more than Star Citizen. I hope for PC Gamers, this game comes out and is everything that they hope it will be but the odds point to the fact that not everyone will be satisfied and so PC Gamers will revolt and fall to name-calling and calls for the heads of those that have ‘failed them’.

Welcome to the Digital Age II

So I got hacked today. I'd say I'm surprised but after you see fraudulent charges on your bank statement for the 789th time, you stop getting angry. It was some Impulse #60000 scam that's been running for at least five years. Still I got it solved in a couple of hours. A Win is anything you can walk away from right?

One Beta to Rule Them All

I hate to admit it, but I’m going to have to eat some crow today. For the last couple weeks I’ve been dogging on Firefall. Firefall is a game that I’ve played over the last couple years off and on. It has always been a game that looks to do things a little differently than everyone else. That being said however, I’ve played a ‘beta’ in Firefall at least three times in the last two years. When I saw they, Red5, had launched another ‘open beta’ I was on my last nerve.

I bought the founders pack last December. I looked at it then as a smart investment. I was getting a great deal which included a lot of permanent items and bonuses. Even now when I see the ‘starter packs’ they are selling for the same price as the old founders pack, I know I made the right choice.

The Top E-Sport Earners

 E-Sport Earnings just came out with its Top 100 lists of highest lifetime earners in E-Sports. E-Sports refers to video games played in tournaments for cash prizes and now that the U.S. government is starting to call these players 'athletes' with all the rights thereof, expect the numbers to just get bigger. Who said video games couldn't make you wealthy? While the list doesn't include endorsements or earnings made outside video game tournaments it is fairly inclusive and is as follows:

 

Top 10 Highest Overall Earnings

               
                ID\ Name\ Total (Overall) \Highest Paying Game

1. Fatal1ty Johnathan Wendel $454,544.98 |Painkiller
2. Flash Lee, Young Ho $437,114.55|StarCraft: Brood War
3. Mvp Jung, Jong Hyun $377,116.38|StarCraft II
4. Jaedong Lee, Jae Dong $374,528.84|StarCraft: Brood War$
5. MC Jang, Min Chul $367,902.11|StarCraft II
6. Moon Jang, Jae Ho $292,019.57|Warcraft III
7. Dendi Danylo Ishutin $275,800.28|Dota 2
8. Puppey Clement Ivanov $274,896.19|Dota 2
9. XBOCT Oleksandr Dashkevych $274,896.19|Dota 2
10. LighTofHeaveN Dmitriy Kupriyanov $267,699.10|Dota 2

LINK

Newsroom 2.0

Newsroom started its second season last night. I watched the premiere "First Thing We Do, Let's Kill All the Lawyers" and enjoyed it. The dialogue especially between the characters was awesome. Sloane and Charlie, played by Olivia Munn and Sam Waterson respectively, making fun of each other was great writing. I have never read a review of season Newsroom before so I was a little surprised to see so many critics have a love-hate relationship with the show. Many referenced creator Aaron Sorkin's earlier work including the seminal The West Wing. It's nearly the exact opposite of the public perception of Newsroom. On IMDB.com the show garnered a 8.5 rating which is a rather high rating for a show so unloved by alot of critics. To give you a frame of reference The Incredibles has a 8.0 and The Dark Knight has a 9.0. It is here that we come to the point where I bring it around to video games.

And South Korea Shall Save Us

If you haven’t noticed the Western MMO markets are going into a bit of a downturn. Doom and gloom aside it’s not entirely unexpected given the high profile misses of the last couple years. But fear not, the South Korean MMO market is going strong. One game that should cheer MMO brawler fans is Project Black Sheep by Neowiz Entertainment. Using the same Havoc Vision game engine as Remedy Entertainment’s Titanfall and possibly coming to the PS4 and the XOne according to Thisisgame Global, this is one game that MMO fans should keep an eye on.

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The War of the Dragon VII

I got back into Guild Wars 2 a couple of weeks ago. I had originally planned to play The Old Republic for a couple more months before FFXIV: A Realm Reborn dropped but I grew a little tired of leveling alts and so moved on to Guild Wars 2. 

Because it had been more than six months since last I played, I quickly deleted an old character and started a new Necromancer. My goal this time around was to get to level 80 before ARR launched. I decided to make my Necromancer more of a tank class this time around, I figured that the Necromancer has the most health out of any class so why not?

The Do’s and Don’ts of Great Storytelling

(As seen by a gamer)

1. The Love Triangle is no Bermuda – Think if you will the greatest love stories you’ve ever read, seen, or heard; now how many of them were love triangles? Love triangles are the foundation of the old romance novels, the ‘bad boy’ and the ‘good one’ fighting over the heart of the heroine. As romance novels modernized the locales and stories might have changed but the Love Triangle remains, Twilight anyone? It’s why Uncharted 2 touches upon it, by the device of the ‘bad girl’ being the old girlfriend. If there’s one thing no story wants to be, it is tired and cliché and quite frankly the love triangle does just that.

2. Many characters make weak stories – If there is one thing you learn when you watch Gordon Ramsey’s Kitchen Nightmares, it’s that too many ingredients muddy the taste of even the finest ingredients. It’s the same thing with characters. When’s the last time you played a game with multiple heroes that had a good storyline? If you answered Borderlands 2, let me remind you of Borderlands 1. Great story begins with laying the foundation. It’s hard enough to do when you only need to focus on a single character, but put three or four in the mix and things get dicey. It’s not to say that it can’t be done, but the challenge is an order or two of greater difficulty.

3. Romance or Something A Lot Like Love – We sing about it, we read about it, we talk about it; humans and love are inseparable. So too then are Story and Love. A great story just isn’t the same without a great love. Chief and Cortana, Drake and Elena, Shepherd and EDI, Joel and Ellie; love doesn’t have to be romantic to boost the emotional level of the story. Kirk isn’t romantically involved with Spock, Benson isn’t in love with Stabler, or Holmes with Watson; love in any of its forms tends to transmute a story to be more than the sum of its parts.