Test Server

I discovered something recently; on Test Live, there is an NPC robot in the ICC are, which will give you loads of things, some examples of which are:

• Chose from a variety of levels, be 200 or 220 almost instantly.
• No need to grind, get all your research and AI XP
• QL 300 AI armour? No problem has, that. Infact has a wide range of armour, including buffing and fr00b.
• CoH weapons aren't on the list? Nope. They are sold in the bot's shop tab.
• Symbs, progression items, Spec 4, all nanos, yup, yup, yup.

There is a slight problem, however. Another character wipe is imminent for the server merge testing. However, before that it was years since characters were wiped and you can have Alpha symbs on within an hour of making your character. (Unless you are a nano mage enf or Atrox, where I am starting to doubt that hands, eye, head, right are amdn chest can be worn). Here are a few pictures of my 220 nano mage enforcer, Tara with an MA, LoTV with a doc, oh and there is short cut teleports, so easy to jump in and do things:

Anarchy Online 11th Birthday

Desert Rider was quite fun but unfortunately this year there was no Nomad armour for the low levels or free players (fr00bs). Anyway, went along, did some damage, killed a few fanatics (the ones I was not running from) :D

Teamed with Game Director

Hi everyone, Really tired, it is dawn here, we ended a short time ago, just going to drop this video link here. Might come back and elaborate some more if I remember. Edit: Part 2

How role playing died on Rimor

(Title is a link)

"Don't wish for those "mythical old days" as described earlier and then scream when you don't get it; as we've already discussed, those days are gone and not coming back." - Kintaii

I was part of that RP community and it was very centric when it was healthy. Either ARK came in and played along or someone would have a "script" they wanted to enact and everyone else was a part player waiting for their turn. I never saw impromptu role player, just some chatting and I would constantly see people sniping at each other when talking in channels.
Funcom might not be updating the time line but RP was being killed off by drama, bitchiness and centric behaviour by the players.

I also saw what I suspect was some bias in the RP but I think it was natural. ARKs would role-play on their player account but when they were in the Events team they seemed to expand their player characters and make things more possible. I could almost guess the ARK player by the way they spoke and by their choices in RP direction.
I can't say that was intentional because the events team that I knew were all good people but I think it did carry over.

Appended:

This argument is invalid. You can use free accounts to role play.

Means - AO's latest game developer resigns (title has link)

I could look at all the things that the developers of Funcom's game, Anarchy Online have done, at this point and it must be appreciated. From the sounds of it, the job is almost like a calling to service.
However, I want to look at and talk to you more about the over all direction of Anarchy and I have been doing so with some people as the following excerpts from a conversation show and on their forums until the general *moderation* became too heavy.

Jenshae > Well, Lindelu won't be split over two jobs but I seriously doubt it, they kept handing out XP (experience points) by the bucket load and making the low and mid levels more vacant while frustrating more new players that turned into heck n00bs (n00b has connotations such as fool or ignorant and heck is short for hecklers, which is the one type of monster you can level on pretty much start to right near the end.)
Jenshae > As usual, too many band-aids and quick fixes, so now they can't get down and fix the real problem.
Jenshae > The only way I see out of it, is to merge the servers, leave the veteran one as it is now with some fixes and then start again from an RK only server, then work on making the game wider instead of longer.
scooby > he (Means) would say in game, he wants to do this, or that... and even got LOADS of player generated ideas to fix the game [but Funcom tied his hands financially with not enough resource (bit I missed copying)]
Jenshae Chiroptera > I disagree. They have brought out a lot of new content such as The Collector after they promised a new player tutorial and start up area
Jenshae > They had the resources to make that garbage but they didn't work on fixing the important stuff.
New PVP waiting area for battle stations to name another one
Jenshae > No, sometimes leading requires you to make short term unpopular decisions to have long term benefits and the AO team have always been unwilling to do that.
Jenshae > I ground up to 220 [to see this "end game"] pretty much on hecklers and Inferno missions, looked at the AI xp (before the fix), the research, the credits, the bot points and the item grind and decided that wasn't worth paying for.

For those of you stalking me, I am over in EVE online now. I am keeping my finger on the pulse of Anarchy, hoping for the new engine, the new player experience and a rebalance but I think those might only give it a second dance around the ball room before it falls down in a heap from the underlying problem.

Now onto some politics:

If you haven't watched "The End of America" by Naomi Wolf yet, I highly recommend it. Then put it together with SOPA censuring (scroll down past the comic)
... and I find myself asking, "How long will 'The American Dream' keep everyone over there asleep?"

Anarchy Online free player (fr00b) raid

We had a turn out of about 22 people for the Mercenary Raid this Sunday. It was so good that I was bored and flew in another character to take a few pictures to share with you guys.

(Click the images to see them larger)



Later on, it got more intense and when it came to Ian Warr we only had three doctors, then joined by a forth. It was amusing to be two heals in, still glowing and in recharge when the other doctors were blaming me for the tank dying.

Anyway, all said and done, the fr00b raiding in Anarchy is the most fun I have ever had in an MMO. Including WoW, DDO, Eternal Chaos, Perfect World and so forth.

Is it possible to stop gold selling?

I believe that it is.

Why does it matter if people can just throw their credit cards at every challenge or aspect of the game?

Well, speaking subjectively, I believe that an MMO should be a virtual world. We should all arrive on equal footings and be cut off from the influence of the real world as much as possible.

Additionally, it is important to have an environment that encourages people to use the tools at their disposal and work co-operatively, instead of throwing mummy or daddy's credit card at it when ever it becomes a little challenging or boring.

Thus, some OCC (Out of Character Chat) words and phrases can possibly be filtered from public / vicinity channels much like vulgar language is handled in many games. Further, I believe that if it is allowed then it robs others of their accomplishments and achievements. There is also how it can change the ambiance of the game from one of "playing the game" to "working the game."

Firstly, one needs to hold the people legally accountable, especially for serious charges. For example:  

"To complete the registering of your account, please print off this form and take it to your local police station. They are to post it with a return address, certifying your identity along with a copy of your passport details."

There is then the problem where some countries are impoverished and corruption is rife.

"Due to the country you live in we have banned all ISPs from connecting to our game servers unless they come from a white listed sub address. One of our verification consultants will be in your [country/city] in the week of ... during the month of ..."

There are a few benefits to this:

• Ensures that your subscribers truly wish to be in your world.
• Sets out a procedure that if not carried out properly results in the breaking of serious laws, such as fraud and bribing officials.
• Slows down the process to make it less financially viable for "gold farming" companies to attempt to re-gain access. Hopefully with needing different anonymizer proxies it would become too expensive.
• More generally, it reassures players that their achievements are fully accomplished and others can't buy or cheat their way there.

How to catch them?

• Accounts
• Banking details 
• Chat logs 
• IP addresses.
  

All MMOs have these and would be crazy not to use them. Here are some lines of thought that might rouse suspicions:

• Why would someone who hadn't spoken much and aren't on each other's friend list, give away say 90% of the wealth on their character to this obvious stranger?
  
• Why would they give away a substantial amount to a stranger that doesn't speak the same language and they hardly talk to each other?
  
• Who gave the sales mule (character made for just one purpose) all those credits?
  
• Why did the IP address of a character change from city to city, states, countries or even continents?
  
• Why did the new IP address user change the language they speak in?
  
• Why did the new player suddenly start making new friends and can't seem to play the same way any more?
  
• How did a group or clan suddenly come into enough wealth to afford a hugely expensive group asset?
  

Why can't characters have their wealth tracked and audited in their transactions to each other?