Well after two hours I have Vista working.  It looks AWESOME in 1280×800 on my 30″ LCD.  WTF.  I’m not sure if it is Microsoft or NVidia who is at fault, but when you buy Vista Ultimate it should WORK.  I mean it is $259 for the upgrade and it is targetted at enthusiasts and gamers.  I have an NVidia 8800 GTX card in my PC.  Right now this is the best card out there.  It ran awesome on Windows XP SP2…. in 2560×1600.  Now the highest available resolution is 1280×800. 

This operating system has been in development for years and they still released it too soon. 

I guess I’m going to have to reinstall XP on this computer.  What fun.  Like I wanted to waste five hours on this crap. 

So maybe I’m part of the problem, because I like to buy the newest stuff which encourages the release of crappy products.  But when I have to think about downgrading a $600 video card because Vista won’t work with it, that is just retarded.  Microsoft and NVidia should be ashamed of themselves.

This is an interesting article on Crapware from Ars Machina.

I’d probably pay $40-$50 to keep all the crap of a new computer I buy.  Frankly if I wasn’t worried about breaking something with the drivers I’d do a fresh install as soon as I got the computer.  I wonder if the OS CDs come with the crapware on them, never tried that.  Anyway, it’s a waste of an hour or two deleting all the crap that comes pre-installed – even just getting it out of the start menu. 

This is definitely entertaining:  Get a First Life!

Previously by the same guy:  Apple Dei

This guy is clever and funny.  Definitely geek entertainment.

So far so good.  I braved the Texas Blizzard of 2007 (lol) to get my copy at midnight Monday (or Tuesday depending).  BTW, a Texas Blizzard basically means freezing rain or the possibility of freezing rain.  In this case there was some freezing and it even snowed a little on Tuesday.  OMG! 

So anyway, during the freezing craziness of this last week I got some time to play.  I am now level 63.  Exciting!  I like the new expansion.  Advancing again is fun.  Exploring new areas again is fun.  Lots of cool new monsters and landscapes. 

More to come.

The Burning Crusade is out!  (Hence the delay, more on that in another post.)

Accounts for Sale:  287 (down 631!)

High Price: $1,300 (7/9 T3 Paladin with KT Loot) – down $200, although I no longer consider this a good indicator since people are posting stuff at delusional price points

Highest Price w/Bid:  $810 (14 bids, 8/9 T3 Warrior with Thunderfury – Based on the formating and e-mail contact I think this is a fraud though – see my previous post on this type of fraud).  There are a fer  bids in the $500-$700 range, but not many.

Accounts with Kel’Thuzad weapons:  1 (down 3) 

Accounts with Legendary items:  12 (sown 26)  (This number is somewhat inflated because it counts splinters of Atiesh and a lot of people have those – not too useful though unless you’re in a guild that can kill KT.) 

Gold: 

• 1000g on Tichondrius (Alliance): $228.78-$336.99 (trending up about $30)
• 1000g on Frostmane (Alliance): $228.78-$278.83 (range closed, but low price up $100)

Sources:  EZgaming, IGE, MOGs

COMMENTARY

Gold continues to remain roughly flat, with a lot of variance in prices between vendors.  Shop around.  I expect gold to fall dramatically in the next few weeks as gold is much easier to obtain in TBC.  However, since epic flying mount training costs 5000g I expect there will be a big jump in demand for large gold purchases.

Account sales are down dramatically.  If you are thinking of buying in for TBC, go for a good T1 character and forgo the T3 premium prices.  You will gear up fast in TBC and T3 will be obsolete at level 70 anyway.

Good luck in the Burning Crusade! 

From Time:  Confessions of a 30-Year-Old Gamer

This is a very good article about MMOGs (Massively Multi-player Online Games) and, in particular, World of Warcraft.  I think the author does a good job of explaining why it’s addictive and powerful.  I think anyone who has friends, significant others, family members, etc. that play MMOGs should read this – it might help you understand.

I’m a pretty heavy MMORPG fan, although somehow I’ve never played Everquest (or EQ2).  I started in MUDs, moved to Ultima Online, then Asheron’s Call, then a break, then to World of Warcraft.

Any objective observer in the MMORPG space can see that World of Warcraft has been a genre shattering success with around eight million subscribers.  Clearly this game has broken beyond the initial MMORPG and fantasy game playing crowd.  Since the biggest (non-Korean) MMORPGs were only at a few hundred thousand users this is a big deal.

World of Warcraft has been out for over two years.  On January 16th it’s first expansion, the Burning Crusade, will be released.  No doubt this will get everyone excited and re-energized about the game for some period of time.  

So, in pseudo-case study form, I ask:

You are the Publisher / GM / CEO / Studio Manager / Executive Producer of a MMORPG.  Your MMORPG has a little buzz in the hardcore fan community, but no one outside the most 10-20k most rabid game fans have ever heard of it.  You have two choices:

• Release on January 30, less then two weeks after the biggest MMORPG in history (by a lot) releases its first expansion.
• Defer your release by sixty to ninty days which results in you losing some revenue, but allows you to make the game better and more polished.

Ok, let’s take what we know about MMORPGs for supporting information:

• MMORPGs consume a lot of time.  They are typically monogamous games, meaning people play only one MMORPG actively at one time.
• MMORPGs have high switching costs.  If you have played World of Warcraft any length of time and are level 60 (or close), you don’t want to walk away from that.  Especially since now you can go to level 70.
• MMORPGs are expensive – often $50 for the game and $10-$20/month for a subscription.

Now, taking that all into account.  Let’s take a look at Vanguard (official site).  This game has been in development quite a while by some of the original team from Everquest.  Original it was going to be published by Microsoft, but subsequently changed publishers to Sony Online Entertainment (SOE) which publishes Everquest I and II and Star Wars Galaxies.

So I follow this market.  I remember reading about Vanguard a few times.  While writing this post I went back and read some other articles.  It looks like World of Warcraft with a little more capabilities for character crafted items and one big “selling point” which is player housing.  Fun.  So I looked at the screenshots.  They don’t look as good as World of Warcraft.  Oh and I watched the movies… which focus almost exclusively on flying mounts, which probably seemed innovative and exciting at the time.  But, woops, they are in the World of Warcraft expansion too.

This is a big problem for MMORPGs:  If you are making a persistent world MMORPG like World of Warcraft, you are going to have to get WoW players to play your game.  The first thing they are going to do is go look at your reviews, screenshots, movies, etc.  And if they aren’t at least at parity with WoW, what would make you think they would even consider shelling out $50 and a lot of time to try it? 

ESPECIALLY WHEN THE WOW EXPANSION JUST SHIPPED.

So since Vanguard doesn’t look as cool as WoW (at least from the screenshots and movies I saw, I’m probably not going to try it.  If the WoW expansion sucks (unlikely) I may be motivated to give it a try.  It’s possible I buy it and try it so I can blog about it – either as a review of a pseudo-major MMORPG release or as a follow-up to this post.  But thinking purely as a player, I would wait.  If it got really popular and people were raving about it, I might try it.  Otherwise my monogamous persistent world MMORPG relationship will continue with World of Warcraft.

Anyway, this seems like a dumb move.  Lecture 2 will be in a month – two weeks after this is out to see how it goes for them. 

Oh, one other thing…  A lot of user comments out there keep saying this game looks good but it isn’t finished.  Blizzard (the maker’s of World of Warcraft) are known for pushing game release dates (a lot) to make sure the game is finished and good.  This has made them a lot of fans and is at least part of the reason almost all of their games are spectacular sellers.  Shipping a game that competes against them and isn’t ready yet:  even dumber idea.

Some user quotes from Gamespot:

apanizo
Heh, they spent 4.5 years and the largest development budget for an MMO to make a bad WoW clone with Eq2 graphics. Everyone point and laugh at SOE, again.

Khimarhi
I am very disappointed in the beta so far. . was thinking about jumping ship from wow to Vanguard. . but not now. . this game is boring in everyway. . good graphics are nice but animations are poor . . and if they are still planning on releasing it at the end of the month then they are making a big mistake. . way too many problems. .

There were, to be honest, a few (not many) positive comments.  Mostly from the few people who don’t like WoW or have an overwhelming love for player housing.

Stay tuned for the next round.

I’m a gadget guy.  I like to have all the shiny new stuff.  I’ll admit to being skeptical about an Apple phone though.  I’m really not interested in a phone that plays music….  I mean I have an iPod (that I use on planes and in my car) and I listen to iTunes on my computer, but I’m not into it on my phone.  Partially because of battery life issues.  Anyway, personal bias aside, I think the Apple iPhone (or whatever it ends up being called after the being sued by Cisco) looks really cool.  I like the interface and that it does all the things a smart phone does and seems to make browsing better. 

I have a Motorola Q now, for which I was forced to switch to Verizon.  I guess in June I will be forced to switch to Cingular to get the iPhone.  That sucks, because after some of the issues I’ve had in the past with Southwestern Bell (subsequently SBC, then AT&T, and now subsuming Cingular too) I swore never to give them another dime.  I’m going to rationalize it by pretending Apple gets all the money.

Also of note, was the Apple TV (originally called iTV).  I ordered one.  I’ll post a review when I get it.  It looks like it could be cool.  And I’d be glad to see DVDs (and this whole stupid debate between HD-DVD and Blu-Ray) disappear just like CDs did.

Kudos to Apple for again releasing really cool products!

Less than one week to The Burning Crusade.

Accounts for sale on eBay:  918 (up 325!)

– Under the old system:  439 (up 155)

High Price:  $1,500 ( 6/9 T3 Warrior with Gressil [Kel’Thuzad sword] also has two other Naxx weapons)

Highest Price w/ Bid:  $1,500 – same account as above, it actually has 7 bids

Accounts with Kel’Thuzad weapons:  4 (up 3) Accounts with Legendary items:  38 (Up 1)  (This number is somewhat inflated because it counts splinters of Atiesh and a lot of people have those – not too useful though unless you’re in a guild that can kill KT.) 

Gold: 

• 1000g on Tichondrius (Alliance): $200.28-$285.77 (trending down about $50)
• 1000g on Frostmane (Alliance): $129.27-$371.39 (about the same)

Sources:  EZgaming, IGE, MOGs

COMMENTARY

Gold seems roughly stable.  A ton of accounts are going on sale.   It looks like a lot of people are  getting out (or cashing out before TBC).  Probably a lot of the really hard core people are just trying to get some cash and will either play alts or start new characters with the new races (Blood Elf or Dranei). 

I’m also seeing a lot of things that look like scams as I browse the accounts for sale.  Be careful. 

I’ll admit two things up front:

1. I don’t use Second Life.  (I would say play, but IMO Second Life is a social experience and not a game.)
2. I’ve really resisted writing about anything Second Life related.  (Although I did briefly mention it and Anshe Chung once.)

Now, on to the good stuff.  There have been a ton of recent articles about Second Life, largely started by a set of articles / press releases about an avatar named Anshe Chung (in real life she is Ailin Graef) becoming the first real world millionaire from Second Life.  Uhm, I’m not sure I said that right, but you get the point.  If not, well you can find it.

So this spat of Second Life press took a turn for the worse (well from Second Life’s perspective anyway) a week or so ago when Clay Shirky questioned their numbers.   That’s an interesting story and relevant to any high profile web company – numbers are important.  Anyway, I don’t want to talk about that either, I’m just catching you up in case you haven’t read the billion Second Life stories that are all over the place.

In Second Life users can own property.  This is different from other MMORPGs where the game company claims ownership of everything (which creates a ton of issues, but again that’s another story).   So Anshe Chung owns property in Second Life and, in a sense, has become something of a celebrity.  Possibly the first real celebrity avatar….

So, she has some press conference in a digital theater in Second Life.  I don’t know what it was about.  (But I’m going to guess she was talking about how rich she has become or how great she is based on all the stories I’ve seen.  Oh wait, disregard that.  I’m a respectable blogger and I’m not supposed to start rumors.)   During this event a group “sabotaged” the even with giant animated penises.  LOL.  She didn’t like this.   I say, hey if you want to be famous, well you can’t expect everyone to love you.

So this really isn’t that interesting.  Celebrities and politicians face protests, hecklers, etc. all the time.  Right?   Right.   How is this any different.

I got this from News.com:  The legal rights to your ‘Second Life’ avatar

So this is what makes it interesting (from the article):

Afterward, a video of the attack was posted on YouTube. When Anshe Chung Studios filed a complaint with the popular video service claiming that Graef’s copyrights had been infringed because images of her avatar were used without her permission, YouTube promptly removed the video.

A quote from the Guntram Graef (her husband), also from the article:

“I have to point out to you that you, most likely by accident, posted an image that contains artwork copyrighted by my wife Ailin Graef and by Anshe Chung Studios, Ltd. and without obtaining our permission to do so,”

Uhm, well, I disagree.  I’m no lawyer, but if Anshe Chung is famous, well she can be stalked and her unflattering pictures can be posted everywhere.  Or at least that is what my understanding the law through analogy logic says.  I’m sure Britney Spears doesn’t like having all those pictures of her with no panties on floating around either.  (Well maybe she does, but that’s beside the point.)  It’s news.  Just like the “sabotage” was news.   So hey fair use and all.

So I say boycott Anshe Chung for being Second Life’s biggest hypocrite.   Anshe:  You can’t have your cake and eat it too. 

• If you want Second Life to be like reality – which I assume you do since you are bragging about making millions of real dollars in it
• And you want to be famous – which I assume you do with all the heavy self-promotion, even if it is just to drive up virtual real estate prices to make you more money
• Then you have to accept being famous with all the goood and the bad that brings. 

So to Anshe Chung, perhaps the world’s most famous avatar, I say welcome to reality.

Oh, and I respect Linden Lab for saying this (from the News.com article):

“Copyright law is applicable to works created in Second Life. Copyright law includes fair use and it includes provisions regarding infringement,” Linden Lab wrote to CNET News.com in a statement Friday.

So I recommend that everyone that cares about these issue avoid transactions with Anshe Chung and her affiliates.  Let the boycott begin!