Following up on my post the other day about galaxies, here’s a couple more links on the whole fiasco that Sony/LucasArts has wrought…

• Wired News: Star Wars Fans Flee Net Galaxy
• TerraNova: Order 66

Update: Two more links…

• Slashdot Games - John Smedley Answers Your Questions
• GameSpot News - Q&A: SOE’s John Smedley on the kinder, gentler Galaxies

I spent a good year and a half or so letting my real life slip into a moderate degree of disarray while I played Galaxies (caution: flash intro with music ahead). When I heard about the changes they were going to make to the game recently I was almost interested again. But all the uproar and old players describing it in comparison has helped me get past that point now.

For Online Star Wars Game, It’s Revenge of the Fans

Last month, LucasArts and Sony’s online game division, which have jointly run Star Wars Galaxies since its introduction in 2003, suddenly turned the game upside down, making the most sweeping changes ever made to a persistent online game. […] Unsatisfied with the product’s merely moderate success, the companies radically revamped the game in an attempt to appeal to a younger, more trigger-happy audience.

‘Virtual’ Virus Sheds Light on Real-World Behavior

All Things Considered, October 5, 2005 — A recent outbreak of a “plague” in a popular online game has scientists considering how the virtual world may provide clues to what people would do in real-world pandemics. In the role-playing game World of Warcraft, a “corrupted blood” spell killed characters and affected players in unexpected ways.

Hey look, the real world catches up to the blogosphere.

(Hat tip to Chris.)

In the post Plaguelands over at Wonderland we learn that (by intention or accident) players of World of Warcraft are starting to be affected by an in-game disease that sounds like it’s apparently spreading out of control on some servers. Maybe I should have given the game more of a chance before cancelling my account after all.

Heres the skinny: Blizzard adds in a new instance, Zul’Gurub. Inside is the god of blood, Hakkar. Well, when you fight him he has a debuff called Corrputed Blood. It does like 250-350 damage to palyers and affects nearby players. The amazing thing is SOME PLAYERS have brought this disease (and it is a disease) back to the towns, outside of the instance. It starts spreading amongst the genral population including npcs, who can out generate the damage. Some servers have gotten so bad that you can’t go into the major cities without getting the plague (and anyone less than like level 50 nearly immediately die). GM’s even tried quarantining players in certain areas, but the players kept escaping the quarantine and infecting other players.

And yes, it’s even got it’s very own YTMND page already.

Computer characters mugged in virtual crime spree

A man has been arrested in Japan on suspicion carrying out a virtual mugging spree by using software “bots” to beat up and rob characters in the online computer game Lineage II. The stolen virtual possessions were then exchanged for real cash.

Quake III Source GPL’ed Within a Week

In his QuakeCon 2005 keynote, John Carmack revealed that after some delays id is finally ready to release the complete Quake III source code for use under the terms of the GPL. He could not give an exact date, but was confident that this would occur “within a week”.

…than making games?

Tripods!: Tripods is an online, multiplayer Google Maps game.

Hosted by a fellow Dreamhost user.

Except for the fact that it doesn’t have a machine gun mounted on the bottom this thing reminds me of those flying surveillance drone things in the Metal Gear games.

Pentagon’s Flying Saucer

(Link shamelessly lifted from Gizmodo)

So I reinstalled NWN last night, and tried to install the modern era hakpack, but something went, like, extra bonus screwy on me. Suffice it to say the character generation process was waaaay weird. As the largest thing that sticks out for example: when selecting skills for a character you were able to assign skill points to things that aren’t skills. Things like “alignment” and “druid” and “character generation”. I’m purely guessing about my problems, mind you, but I think it’s either that I installed the multitude of parts in a way that wasn’t quite right, or that their code is built on the assumption that you’ve bought all the expansion packs for the game as well (which I have not). Either way I’ll have to try hacking about with it again tonight.

I admit that I was prepared to write a long diatribe about how what I really wanted in an online game was something exactly like what Neverwinter Nights is, but that would let me make modern-day or near-future style modules for it. Then kabam, it falls in my lap that someone made a modern d20 hakpack for Neverwinter so it could be used for exactly that. Huzzah.

Well, aside from an “excited puppy feels the need to pee when meeting new dogs” filled trip to Petsmart there’s not a whole lot to report for the weekend. We blew saturday around the apartment doing pretty much nothing.

I was actually pleasantly surprised by the “Sci-fi pictures” version of Anonymous Rex, it was not a suckbomb like pretty much everything else the sci-fi channel makes for itself (or airs on the weekends).

Sunday we went on the aforementioned Petsmart trip and later on to the market (which sucked, when did it become a sport to see how many people you could block from getting around?) and then back home where I whipped up some of my homemade mac and cheese.

I tried playing Galaxies again for a little bit (I think the last time I had logged on was a month ago) and was bored to tears, again. Then went out and watched some part of The Life and Death of Peter Sellers with Andrea. Then bed, falling asleep during [adult swim] and now we’re here again.

okay, so DS4Free.com is giving away Nintendo DS systems if you get people to sign up and complete a couple offers. (Please use that link there, that way I get credit for people doing them.) Most of them are free or free trial stuff so if anyone out there wants to help out, please feel free to do so.

Thanks for the heads up from Gary/Phaln/Vanadium over at Splurb and op9.