“In a move to increase operational efficiency and reduce costs, Sony Online Entertainment has eliminated 5% of its full-time workforce, equaling 41 people. SOE looks forward to continuing its leadership role in the online games industry as it celebrates the highly successful launch of Free Realms, the 10-year commemoration of its ground-breaking EverQuest franchise, and the continued performance of the company’s other games.”

(source: Massively)

 Is this the sign of the end for SoE’s gaming days or will Sony produce a hot fix for this one? Leave a comment and let us know what you think.

-=Sanister=-

It’s possible that the Chinese Government has gone overboard with the pre-paid game card thing, or perhaps they had to ban that also in order to close the loop. Read the full story and let me know what you think by leaving a comment.

Check out the full story!

-=Sanister=-

Btw before you ask yes I played EQ (sorry noobs EverQuest) and no not that shitty EQ2 – Friends don’t let friends play EQ2.

Watch it and drool geeks – I did.

BAM!

EverCracked! The Phenomenon of EverQuest

Sanister Out!

My guess is that with some bug fixes they will be bringing out the Slayer MDPS class (that’s Melee Damage Per Second noob) and probably buffing destro again….damn Mythic.

In wondering what the new patch notes would be like I stumbled upon a supposed leak of Warhammer Online 1.2 Patch notes (a work in progress). While these look somewhat legit they could also be 100% bullshit – I’m kinda leaning towards bullshit.

We don’t know so I thought it would be a great idea to post them and let you guys leave comments about what you think; good, bad, or what-the-fuck-ever.

Warhammer Online 1.2 Patch Notes

This started out as a Perpetual Studios game and might have been a flop were the title not handed over to Cryptic Studios. And by handed over I mean SOLD in early 2008, yea that long ago.

Nothing against Perpetual but when you have people posting that your community manager has banned testers for….posting bug reports….and your devs dont seem to be able to get much of anything working….well its time to sell the License/IP. But enough of that….if you’re like me then you are looking forward to at least 2 things.

1) The Star Trek franchise reboot in theaters soon…

2) An MMO where you, and your friends, can boldly go where no man has gone before. Fucking YEA Star Trek Online….

The game takes place in 2049 which is 30 years after Star Trek Nemesis.There will be Open PVP, but no PVP specific servers – what did you expect they made City of Heroes!

So far it looks good the first game play trailer has been release, you can see that here.

Playable races include Human, Vulcan, Andorian, Klingon, Orion, Gorn, with some others to be announced. While everyone will be a captain by default, there will be a few career paths for you to select from for your base skills and abilities. Those classes include: Engineer, Tactical Officer, Doctor, Science Officer and others.

The early talks of key features are, of course, Deep Space ship-to-ship combat, On Ship Quests/Adventures and surface avatar based combat. That’s right you the medical npc and Red Shirt guy can beam down to the surface and take on some NPC’s.

Not much more to say about this but our concerns going forward are that most games that try to do too much end up looking and playing that way. Either ship combat is awesome and avatar combat sucks balls or both suck and everything is really good looking.

Good luck Cryptic…we’ll be watching you.

Not too long back there was this little company called Napster that got sued and the music sharing world as we know it changed. Could this be the fate also of the MMO World? Well Worlds.com, thats right that company from the 90′s, is sueing NcSoft for patent infringement…for what you ask? Maybe for copying some super secret mob killing technology or something like awesome npc aggro algorythms? Fuck No! For the obvious they patented the method of allowing players to interact with others in a virtual space……ummmm WTF patent office do you not have any ability to see 5 feet down the road? This is almost as bad as the guy who patented E-Commerce!

NcSoft is being hit for the following titles: City of Heroes, City of Villains, Dungeon Runners, Exteel, Guild Wars, Lineage, Lineage II, and Tablula Rasa….the sad part is at least one of these titles was Free To Play and at least one didnt make hardly any money…is there no justice!

Well while I side with NcSoft the question becomes if this suit succeeds could it be even more difficult for non-major companies to launch an MMO as Worlds.com will then have the right to force the company to pay out for rights to make a fucking MMO – I’m sorry a virtual space.

If you would like to read the actual complaint it is located here…

SEE I fucking told you it was real..

Well if you are like me then you were just biting at the bit
to get cracking on these Live Event pieces so you can be one of the elite
“few” to get your geeky paws all over your new class – Knight of the
Blazing UBER SUN (Order) or Blackguard Lameness (Destruction)….ok so UBER and
LAMENESS aren’t really part of the titles but I play ORDER so…go screw
yourself Destro NEWBS!

So far I have participated in two days worth…if you want to call it two days
worth…of the Live Event in WAR (Rock ON!) and I feel completely and totally
let the fuck down…

Look Mythic you told me this was going to be challenging and FUN…where the fuck is
the challenge or the fun:

Day 1 – Complete Reikland Factory Scenario

At first glance this appears to be a NEW scenario, sexy new map, bigger area and then you realize…it’s the same shit on a modified map! This NEW scenario which is just like our other scenarios where
you have to hold multiple points on a Map for points – kinda like oh I don’t
know Unreal Tournament (I’m still waiting for the LMS version to come out for
WAR scenarios).

So the new map is GREAT complete with tons of uber leet stuff
like healing and damaging through walls and floors…fuck that line of sight
shit who needs it!
Of course it’s fair that I get hit by your rank 4 moral UBER NUTS ability of PWNING
when you can’t even see me anymore. But alas, you run it once and win OR lose
you get credit….and there was much rejoicing.

Day 2 – Complete 3 stages of a PQ.

Now maybe I’m the fucktard that actually
thought they meant complete all 3 stages of ONE PQ….but apparently they meant
go do ANY 3 stages of any PQ’s…so fuck IT! I went into Altdorf with my UBER
BW of flaming PoWaH1! and lit up the STAGE 1 ONLY PQ in the BAR that contains
level 17 mobs – which since I’m level 38 means I kill 50 of them in the same
time it takes me to type to my guildies how fucking stupid this is! And DING I
have completed 3 stages of a PQ – bit misleading since I did Stage 1 3 times.

Again WHERE THE HELL IS MY CHALLENGE AND FUN MYTHIC! It could be me, I am a bit
Power Gamer-ish yea maybe I should have taken it upon myself to only do PQ’s in
Chapter 21+….but I ask you, WHY THE FUCK WOULD I? Why take 45 minutes to do
what can be done in 10? Hell the biggest time sync for me was…well waiting
for my AE abilities to refresh…which is about 10 seconds.
And there was much rejoicing….

Well now I will go fingers crossed hoping for some ACTUAL challenge and fun and
not just another event that I can, dare I say, cheat on!

Don’t make me hate you WAR…because all I have to play is WoW otherwise…yea I
still play it! Go DEATHKNIGHT!

So what does that mean to you, well over the next week or so we will be posting up highlights and lowlights of various games and events that took place at PAX. By the way these are our thoughts and opinions on these games and not influenced in any way by game companies – which means we won’t pull any punches when telling you how fucking horrible some of these games are!

For some of the uber leetness to look forward too:

- Battleforge greatness

- Aion its pretty but what the fuck else? Oh and possible BSOD issues!

- Starcraft 2 another installment for the Korean Ladder on Bnet

- Demigod puts the power of being a GOD into your puny mortal hands

- Lord of the Rings Online: Mines of Moria & the fucking horrible Puzzle game!

- Wrath of the Lich King (yea we saw it!)

Aight peeps that’s all for now….

- Sanister

By the way we heard about a curse being placed on viewers of Babylon AD - it’s called LAMENESS x 5 (yea it stacks bitch!)

PAX is a big gaming convention where we will see the latest and greatest (so they think) games coming to the MMOG market in the upcoming year. A couple of the BIG demos we all want to see are WAR: Age of Reckoning, WoW: Wrath of the Lich King…and others.

As we progress through the event we will post updates to try and let you know whatt’s going on as the convention progresses.

Stay tuned peeps!

- Sanister