[Windosill and Small Worlds]

Yesterday I came across two little indie gems; Windosill, a toylike puzzle game from Vectorpark and Small Worlds, one of the 'Exploration' themed entries in the Casual Gameplay Design Competition #6.Small Worlds plays on the desire many people have in games to uncover every area of an ingame map -- making it the entire goal of the game, while Windosill encourages creative interaction with strange objects found in various rooms in order to progress. Both games are brilliantly simple and interesting, as well as fun!

[Vintage Newsweek Fail]

A fun article from Newsweek magazine in 1995, scoffing at the idea that the internet could be anything more than a passing fad:

How about electronic publishing? Try reading a book on disc. At best, it's an unpleasant chore: the myopic glow of a clunky computer replaces the friendly pages of a book. And you can't tote that laptop to the beach. Yet Nicholas Negroponte, director of the MIT Media Lab, predicts that we'll soon buy books and newspapers straight over the Internet. Uh, sure.

But seriously, the advance of technology in this generation was so rapid, no wonder even the 'experts' were blindsided. We've come a long way in 30 years!

[Is the Traditional MMORPG Obsolete?]

Raph Koster has an interesting post on his blog speculating that the 'virtual world' MMORPGs where immersion and roleplay were the ultimate goal is a thing of the past. I think he's right -- it seems that more 'game-y' MMOs (often called 'theme-park style games) are the new norm.

I think this is plain in the generation gap that is visible among MMO players nowadays -- the 'oldschool' player who wants an MMORPG with deep lore to follow, and a world they can lose themselves in and feel a part of. These types are largely derided by the 'new wave' of theme-park gamers who scorn those that RP, or care about lore, or who express a desire for more 'immersion' and game mechanics that encourage a 'fantasy life' experience. The oldschoolers want avatars that are detailed and highly customizable so that they can create a representation of themselves that has a deeper personal meaning; the new generation sees avatars as simply 3D mouse cursors that are used to interact with the game environment.

The oldschoolers scorn the entire idea of a 'themepark ride on rails' with 'shallow worldbuilding'. They are disappointed in most modern MMORPGs because the concept of a 'virtual fantasy world that you can pretend to live in' is not what the modern MMORPG is about.

Related Link: The rise of RMT and the decline of RP in MMORPGs

[Allods Online First Impressions]

So the Russian Free-to-Play MMORPG Allods Online went into Open Beta on the 16th, and I decided to check it out, since what I'd heard of it before sounded kind of interesting. I've been on more of a 'casual playing' kick since my WoW hiatus, and F2P games like Mabinogi and Wizard101 have been filling my time rather nicely, so I figured I'd give a new one a go.


I have to be honest, one gets a real WoW-vibe when first starting out, simply because the art style of Allods is very 'hand-drawn' as well. The game world is simply beautiful, and very impressive for a F2P game. The soundtrack, however, is pretty generic western fantasy-MMO fare, and pretty forgettable. I know many people often prefer their own soundracks anyway, so that's not a big deal. There are also many similar UI and 'quality of life' mechanics that are the same between both games (like a quest tracker, Auction House, talent trees, etc) but Allods puts it's own mark on these now-familiar aspects that many people consider 'standard' in their MMOs now. One thing I actually did NOT miss was a minimap -- I find that I tend to stare at the little dots on it more than I actually look at the gameworld around me if I have one, so Allod's simple compass and well-marked worldmap were good enough for me. =)


The classes in the game are also a nice mix of familiar roles and archetypes with enough unique spin added to still make them interesting. Add to that the various talent trees and unique racial skill combinations, and you have many diverse customization options for your character.


The game has two PvP factions -- the lighter, fantasy-themed League and the darker steampunk-style Empire, and each has their own unique selection of races. There are two human cultures, a fairy/elf race, the Arisen (zombie cyborgs), Orcs, and the token 'goofy, short race', the Gibberlings (which look like a mix between hamsters and feral kittens). A fun aspect of making a Gibberling character is that you actually end up customizing and naming three individuals who then act as one unit (because Gibberlings as a culture always do things in groups).

The stand-out endgame option that Allods Online has is it's Ship-to-Ship combat in the areas between the allods (world islands). A minimum crew of 6 players controls each ship, with one player manning guns, another navigating, etc. Groups can pilot ships to allods that are inaccessible by any other means, and then explore and accumulate treasure there which they can load into their ship's hold and take back to their home port to earn rewards. However, once in transit, airships can be attacked and robbed by enemy crews, or even destroyed completely, losing all their loot. Therefore, airship exploration and piracy is a viable endgame goal for guilds, as well as the usual fare of PvE raids and PvP.

I've only played for a few days, but I'm very impressed with the level of quality Allods has for a F2P game. The quests are nothing innovative, but I'm having fun exploring and enjoying not feeling pressured to 'get my money's worth' like I do with a P2P game. Allods also doesn't have the problems with empty grinds or lack of content like many other F2Ps. Frankly, I think Allods Online is one of the best free MMOs on the market right now, up there with FreeRealms, Mabinogi, and Wizard101. You get tons of entertainment for free, plus the game runs well and looks fantastic. I think the current Cash Shop items are overpriced (and there are no cool 'fluff' items for sale yet), but since I haven't felt a need to buy anything so far I'm ignoring it for now (I hear that statistically, the majority of F2P players never buy anything, but the small minority that do generate enough revenue for the games to profit anyway).

If you like many of WoW's basic mechanics (or WoW's art style), but want a change of scenery or something a little different, you should check out Allods Online. It's a very polished, solid game with some fun concepts (even if it's not a huge revolutionary step in the genre of MMORPGs), it's worth checking out. =)

[How George Lucas Turned the Jedi Into Villains]

  I will admit that my opinion of the Star Wars prequels is, like most folks', pretty low. Actually, I find the entire morality of the Jedi and the Republic kind of reprehensible, actually. I had my first realization of this after reading this article in defense of the Empire, several years ago. I do not think the Empire was 'good', per se, but I could totally understand the feelings that went behind it's creation. The Republic was, by even the admission of the protagonists in the prequels, completely useless and corrupt. Yet even so, the Jedi defended it and attacked those who wished to secede because of it's corruption. That George Lucas made the Jedi into status-quo defenders of a broken system willing to use an army of brainwashed slaves to crush opposition, basically turned Jedi into bad guys. Way to go, George!

  The addition of 'midichlorians' lessened Jedi even more... they went from being enlightened figures to simply a caste of 'superior blooded' elitists. Making their powers genetic instead of spiritual/philosophical really cheapened the concept of Jedi, and that just compounded the overall ethical failings of the entire Republic system as outlined in the prequels. For some examples of Jedi hypocrisy (and the overall plot failure) of the prequels, this 7-part series on Youtube is fairly entertaining (even if the author has a bizarre fixation on violence against women as being hilarious). Also, can someone please explain the logic of having a 'ruling class' of people that is founded on their genetic superiority over others that then PROHIBITS THE PROCREATION of those people. If being born with a certain amount of midichlorians in your blood is what makes you able to use the Force, why on earth are powerful Jedi not encouraged to produce offspring with each other? I can see prohibiting relationships with non-Jedi, but to outlaw romantic relationships (and sex) all together? That makes no sense.

  It appears that Lucas, lacking the collaborative checks and balances that were present in the original trilogy, basically rewrote and over-edited his prequels into incoherency. However, the threads of an older, more rational storyline can still be seen through the murk of a watered-down, shallow final product. The original decline of Anakin was supposedly written to show him sincerely buying into the concept of a totalitarian Sith Empire being superior to the decadent, corrupt Republic and their self-righteous Jedi police force (plus, it appealed to his obsession with control). But then Lucas decided to make him do it out of 'misguided love' for Padme and edited the story to shoehorn that angle in. Of course, the prequels already suffer from so many non-sequiturs and unresolved plot points (like who ordered the clone army) that these changes just added to the overall mess.

  To me, it's obvious that Anakin never truly loved Padme. He wanted her, the way he wanted everything else in his life (and felt he was owed it). He only loved power and dominance, and that fact is best illustrated when he force-chokes her into unconsciousness just for disagreeing with him at the end of Revenge of the Sith. He was never supposed to be a misguided, empathetic character. At his core, he was always an arrogant sociopath, and Lucas' ham-handed attempts to try and make him more 'sympathetic' only further muddled the story. I guess he realized that his prequel depictions of Anakin were not actually showing any 'goodness deep inside' for Luke to later call out from Darth Vader, and tried to repair his mistake after the fact.

  Of course, all these topics are old hat and have been argued to death by Star Wars geeks everywhere, but I felt a random need to post something interesting this month. =P

[This is the Deal With Twilight...]

I posted a random one-off question a long time ago asking why the heck these mediocre books are so popular. And I think Cleolinda has hit the nail on the head:

"I started thinking about romance myself, and I think I've figured it out: the key component of romance is tenderness. Because something can be totally sexyhot without tenderness; it's tenderness that creates the "romantic" atmosphere, the one that a lot of guys tend to turn their noses up at--because tenderness requires you to be vulnerable, to open yourself up and say, I want you, I need you, I am incredibly blessed to even be touching you right now. (Maybe that's where the honesty comes in after all.)

So if you buy your girlfriend a dozen roses at the supermarket and toss them at her on Valentine's Day all, "LOOK, here you are, now SHUT UP until next year," you are doing it so very, very wrong, and she probably feels it. It's not about hearts and flowers and chocolates and money spent, and in fact all that ephemera is a convenient way to dodge actual tenderness, because you can feel like you've done something without putting any real feeling into it. And Twilight? Is all about the freakin' tenderness. It's larded with tenderness; feeling drips off the pages and oozes from the film stock and romantics eat it up and then turn around and line up for more. I mean, that slow dance at the end of the first movie, he is crying while they're eyesexing, for God's sake. That's like--the emotional equivalent of--I don't even have an adequate pornographic metaphor for that."

So yeah, the books are failures on a literary level... but it's not the story that the fans love so obsessively. It goes a lot deeper than that. Which actually makes me disappointed that a story that celebrates so many dysfunctional and dangerous relationship aspects has managed to hit this nerve that so many women have.