As you undoubtedly heard by now, the once King of Pop Michael Jackson has passed away. The Los Angeles Times reports:
L.A. Times wrote:
Michael Jackson, an incomparable figure in music, dance and culture whose ever-changing face graced the covers of albums that sold more than half a billion copies, died Thursday, shortly after going into cardiac arrest at his rented Holmby Hills mansion. He was 50. He spent much of his life as one of the most famous people on the planet, and to many, his untimely death felt both unthinkable and, oddly, inevitable.
Paramedics found Jackson in cardiac arrest when they arrived at his home shortly before 12:30 p.m., three minutes and 17 seconds after receiving a 911 call. His personal physician was already in the house performing CPR. Jackson was not breathing, and it appears he never regained consciousness. Paramedics treated Jackson at the house for 42 minutes, and he was declared dead at 2:26 p.m. at UCLA Medical Center, about two miles from his home above Sunset Boulevard.
Love him or hate him, he did make some great music. He was weird, yes, he was awkward, yes, he had lots of charges against him which might or might not be true, yes. But for me I'll remember him for his music.
So here's a little tribute I found on YouTube (made years ago) with one of his most wonderful songs.
My condolences to his family and my thanks to Michael for giving us so much wonderful music, regardless of what happened after.
No news for ages, and then suddenly two separate bits of news on unrelated D&D-based MMOs (the other being that DDO is going free to play).
Variety (and The Escapist) reports that Cryptic Studios, recently purchased by Atari and working on Champions Online and Star Trek Online, has a third project in the works for one of Atari's older titles and that this third projects is a Neverwinter Nights MMO:
Variety wrote:
Sources tell us that the developer is working on a massively multiplayer online (MMO) version of “Neverwinter Nights” with an eyed 2011 release.
Of course Atari is still having financial difficulty and the MMO space is a difficult market to thrive in, so it's a big risk for them to do this.
Another question on my mind is exactly what they mean with "MMO". One of the strengths, and the main success, of Neverwinter Nights was that people could create their own worlds and act as DM for groups of adventurers to tell stories and roleplay or do combat or whatever. If they're making this an MMO in the traditional sense then it needs to offer some pretty damn impressive features to make up for the fact that there's only one world that people jsut have to accept.
If, on the other hand, this becomes more of a "create your own PW" product, possibly with the world you can created hosted by the developers but that's not needed, then this could be very, very successful. Depending on how they do that.
But let's not forget that at the moment it's nothing more than a rumor and since we don't know anything at all there's little use (beyond entertainment perhaps) in speculating.
Though the MMO Dungeons & Dragons Online (by Turbine) has been having a subscription-based model since its launch in 2006, it seems that this summer it is going free to play.
What that means is that everyone can play it for free, level all the way up to level 20 and everything. Though it comes with limitations and to lift those you'll have to become a VIP member by paying a monthly fee (of about $15/month). Next to that they also have additional content that you can buy for a fee.
The description of the difference between free players and VIP players can be read here. Basically, as a free player you're restricted to the standard classes (and have to buy classes like monk) and the standard races. Though you can buy the drow race to play for a fee without becoming a VIP member; so far I haven't found yet how much that would cost. You're also limited in the adventure areas (basically only the city and the immediate surroundings), the number of character slots, and a number of other things like limited chat and bank storage.
But hey, it's free. So it can't hurt to have a look. Last I tried it though (around the time it launched) it wasn't that great though. Didn't really feel like D&D to me, and I don't like the Eberron setting. Still can't hurt to have another look, even if I'm sure that some of whatever one would decide to pay them goes to Wizards as well and as such they're not getting a dime from me.
Still, interesting development. More information at the links.
[UDPATE] From The Escapist comes the following update:
Quote:
Codemasters, which operates Dungeons & Dragons Online in Europe, has clarified that the free-to-play model will only be available in North America. "For the time being, DDO Europe will not be assuming this new business model and the European DDO game service will remain a monthly subscription-based game with all new content created available to all subscribers, as has been the model up until now," Codemasters said in a statement.
"As the beta progresses we will release more information regarding the future plans for EU players," the company said.
Ah well, that means that this news is, either way, moot for me anyway.
[UPDATE 20090618] And seems that Kotaku has a couple of screenshots of the store. It seems that to buy the drow race you need either 595 points or earn 400 favor in the game. No idea how much a point costs in real money (not that I have any intention of giving them any money).
It also seems that I got into the DDO beta for this, so we'll see if it improved any; again I'm not expecting to try it more than once (yeah, I know that's not in the beta-testers spirit ).
Yesterday evening BioWare announced that they’re partnering with Green Ronin Publishing to create a Pen and Paper roleplaying game based on their Dragon Age franchise. The author of the new game will be Chris Pramas, whose work include work on the Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay game and Freeport. The game is currently slated to release September 2009.
BioWare is very pleased to announce that we have partnered with the good people over at Green Ronin Publishing http://www.greenronin.com/ to create the Dragon Age Pen and Paper role playing game.
The pen and paper game extends the Dragon Age universe, making it more accessible to passionate RPG fans looking for another way to experience the epic fantasy world of Thedas.
A couple of other announcements of the news include Kotaku and the Escapist.
Sounds exciting, particularly with the big giant being dead. Though I personally don’t expect to be playing this or any other P&P game in the near future, it should still be a good source of background information for the Dragon Age world (Thedas, which interestingly enough stands for “The Dragon Age Setting”).
I’ve just completed some spring cleaning on the forums (as originally suggested in this thread). Mainly a number of forums have been merged into each other.
All the old Lisse Linath forums (most of which have been invisible for a long time) have been Archived (moved to a new, invisible forum). The same goes for all the (invisible) Temple of Eilistraee forums. Both associated websites should still function (for now), with the slight exception of the City of Eilistraee news page, but both sites will be removed once the wiki is fully operational.
In the Roleplaying section the old Arena, Campaigns and Free Form Roleplaying forums have been merged into a single Roleplaying forum. All old threads from the Arena forum have been prefixed with “[ARENA]” and all old threads from the Campaigns forum have been prefixed with “[CAMPAIGN]” to denote where these threads came from. The roleplaying forum rules will soon be adjusted to reflect the new merged nature of the forum. The Out Of Character forum and the Stories forum remain as they were.
In the Chosen of Eilistraee section the old Forum Help and Wiki Discussion forums have been merged into a single Site Help forum, intended for all questions and problems related to any part of the Eilistraee.com website. The old Inner Sanctum forum (that nobody had access to and was thus empty) has been removed and the old Members Discussion forum (that accepted members had access to) has been merged into the General Discussion forum (threads have been locked and given the prefix “[MEMBERS DISCUSSION]”). By request the Theological Debate forum remains as is, as are the Chosen News forum and the On Promoting Joy forum.
Because the Lisse Linath and the Temple of Eilistraee sections have been removed entirely their associated usergroups have been removed as well (Builders, Dungeon Masters, Scribes, etc). I’ve also disabled polls on the Roleplaying and Stories forums (and removed all existing polls from their threads) as that’s something better suited for the Out Of Character forum.
The result of all this should be that the forums will look a lot more tidy (particularly for me, considering that as Admin I saw every single hidden forum ). If there are any problems, questions, etc then please let me know.
[EDIT 20090416] The Roleplaying Guidelines have been adjusted as well to include addendums for Campaign threads and for Arena threads (which mimic the behavior of the old Campaigns and Arena forums).
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