inb4alpha

So some employee at Jagex did an interview and let it slip that Stellar Dawn was now in the internal alpha-testing phase.

http://www.thealistdaily.com/news/feature-jagex-finds-a-hero/

They visiting moderators will either keep it quiet or vehemently deny it and point to The Vaunted Plan again. (Hint: The latter ain't worth shit.)

My return-to-EVE plan is coming along nicely and if Stellar Dawn doesn't get anything really, really soon, I'm hitting EVE Online seriously. I miss that Rattlesnake I lost a whole lot and Jagex isn't exactly doing much.

One thing I always find laughable is when employees make excuses like, "Less time spent chatting to you means more time in the office."

This gets particularly impressive when it comes from a community team member. Not talking Jagex, though they've done this before. Just in general. As the community manager, your paycheck rests on sitting at your comfy chair in the office and typing messages to the players. It's not hard to keep a window open on the side to tell people that the game is in progress and you're at your desk, working on it.

Better yet, you're the only link between community and designers, which means it's up to you to take into consideration the last 7 months or so of complaints about your company doing jack shit to someone who cares and making sure they realise that they're making a negative impact on people. Negative impact on people, not a substantial amount of customers. The few dozen or so of us complaining don't matter on the income graphs, but it isn't that hard to have enough empathy to realise that your plan sucks ass.

Regards, IVIilitarus

Escalation

http://www.fanfiction.net/s/6855533/3/Moros

http://www.stellardawncentral.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=17435

Regards, IVIilitarus

Big, Stupid Jellyfish

Battlefield 2142 is great, if it weren't trying to kill me through lag. My average ping on an international server is 300. 280 on a good day. That is one on a long list of Very, Very Bad Things. The last South African server shut down over a year ago. They've go servers for every other Battlefield except 2142. Which really sucks.

I played anywhere. On international servers, I risked getting kicked by a bastard admin every time they saw I had a ping of 300. Does the fact that I'm doing better than half the people with double digit pings mean anything to you, fuckwad?

I racked up a few rather nice awards 8 or 9 Collector's Pins for killing 8 people with a knife in one round (knifing server). A silver and bronze star, for coming in second and third place on the scoreboard in a round, respectively. Nice thing about 2142's rewards is that many can be awarded multiple times. No achievements here, just unlockable equipment and shiny awards.

Also today, I got into EVE again. Started a Minmatar character. It got boring real quick. Minmatar ships are just ugly rustbuckets to me, despite their PvP prowess. My serious character will be Gallentean.

Also got screenies from my 2142 happy fun time. The scoreboard was me against the AI, with 49 kills and 66 total points in a single life, before dying. There's one of a conversation I caught on the knifing server (top left corner) and the last is a coupla giant robots (battlwalkers, for the uptight).





Regards, IVIilitarus

I Don't Give a Shit About Either of You

http://www.stellardawncentral.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=17474

http://services.stellardawn.com/m=forum_fo/c=CNYru3Kscpg/forums.ws?86,87,658,97268

Really, I just want my game.

Exams are coming up. I'm probably gonna go get back into EVE Online. The friend I gave my stuff and money to helped me work out a plan. The new Buddy System lets the 21 day invite be redeemed with a PLEX to the inviter. She'll invite me for a 21 Day trial. At the end of the trial, I'll use the PLEX she is given to add 30 Days. Then she'll sell all of my old stuff and send most of the money over, enough for a startup fund and another PLEX. That's 81 days in total, should be enough to get me started.

Which might work, if I hadn't suddenly gotten into Battlefield 2142. It was one of the first 5 video games I ever brought, and my first real FPS. I was about 13 at the time, and had no clue how to work the account, registration, patching and multiplayer element. In fact, the singleplayer was above me, too because I still had my old computer which couldn't even run the game. It collected dust for years and I got my new PC last year, so I installed it, but still had capped internet, so the multiplayer and patching. Battlefield singleplayer is notoriously shitty, with no more than 16 players per map and most of the maps locked.

Exams are coming up.

Battlefield 2142 is coming up.

This can't end well.

Regards, IVIilitarus

I Miss EVE Online

I really, really do. Was a great game. Is a great game. Can't afford to go back on a nonexistent salary.

Fallout: New Vegas is going strong. Sniper did an awesome job. Got a new character and I'm busy chopping things with a big ol' axe.

I came to what I think is the best solution to the Combine Reform. (I'm the leader, I decide what's best.) I dropped it on them and told them I didn't feel like doing it anymore. 3 volunteers so far. Gonna see where this goes, I want to be a passive observer.

Also, I got picked for the second round of beta testers for 8Realms. I checked the forums after the first round and they were deader than Stellar Dawn's pre-beta forum (I'm coining that phrase).

Playing it for a bit. It's nothing special so far.

Regards, IVIilitarus

Great Games Revisited 'n' Stuff

I don't feel like writing a long, winded bitching post today, so I'll keep it short; break from school is over. Minecraft was a lot of fun, and I'm looking into doing more, just need a bit of extra time. Exams are an route, ain't that a kick in the head?

Got some distance in Fallout: New Vegas. Very, very good game. Lots of fun stuff to do and quests to complete. Second chapter of Moros is coming along nicely. I really took my sweet time with that one, future chapters will be quicker. Probably. Maybe.

The Combine reform is pretty much dead on account of one person not doing their job: Me. I'm considering relegating the remains of the reform to everyone else. No input from me. They work between themselves to do what's left to do and present it to me for editing and review. This is to:

A. Kick their asses into gear.
B. Make them realise that I won't be here forever, and they better be able to work on their own if they want the Combine to get anywhere.
C. Make them realise I am fucking lazy and I'm the leader. If I don't want to do something, I don't have to and they're stuck picking up the slack in my stead.

Jagex is being stupid about their marketing for Stellar Dawn, which hasn't really changed in the last 5 months or so. In fact, their marketing strategy for Stellar Dawn is dumber than a particularly unintelligent sack of hammers.

Whoops. I said I wasn't gonna write a bitching post.

Well, it was only 25% bitching, right?

Regards, IVIilitarus

I Always Wanted to be a Jedi

I tucked into Knights of the Old Republic 2 recently, because I really, really wanted to see what happens a few years after KotOR, which I'd bought and played years ago.

Thing I've noticed is that KotOR 2 is a lot like KotOR, but better in every way. It's the same, but better. I dunno how they pulled it off. The missions and characters are more interesting. The story is more engaging. It intertwines perfectly. The first game was my first RPG and awesome, and this one is just whoa.

However, Kreia is a sanctimonious bitch.

This also got me interested in Star Wars: The Old Republic. For those of you living under a rock or just not interested in the latest gaming news, The Old Republic is an upcoming MMORPG set a few years after KotOR 2. All part of that era. Once done with the game, I went over to The Old Republic's website to find some more stuff about it.

So the bitching starts here. When I got there and began staring in awe at how well updated the website was and how active and large the community is, I realised that Jagex is so terrible at marketing MMORPGs, that they've dulled me to good MMORPG marketing. I got the same feeling I got from Empire at War before release, of seeing a very filled website full of detail on game mechanics, classes, units, story and location. I was stunned, and then realised that this is what a pre-release site for a game should look like. Too many months spent on Stellar Dawn means I've forgotten just what a good game looked like.

I still have no idea why Jagex would do this to their game. They're a company running games on an obscure platform without the gigantic budget Bioware has, so that means they should be doing everything they can to build support for their game. Bioware doesn't have to do a thing. It's Star Wars and it's Bioware. Those 2 things alone would make me buy it. Jagex is doing a homebrewed universe with half the recognition and they're doing jack shit to promote their big title.

It's understandable that they wouldn't care about a few of their players like me complaining before release. They'll get enough publicity to get it going even if the people on the forums now dropped dead. What I don't understand is why they're going to jeopardise their into game's future for their vaunted, bullshit 'Plan'. The moderators think its funny when they say the first rule of the plan is, 'Do not talk about the plan.' They haven't been sitting around for years, waiting for something that's already died once.

Is it the company's execs who are too stupid to market what could be a great title? Does player support have a good reason for sitting on their collective ass? The employees aren't allowed to discuss their game on their own website. Recently, the BETA application system saw downtime and was changed slightly and threads started cropping up about it. When a bug in the system, followed by one extra field you're supposed to fill in a 3 field application causes a spike in activity, you know something's wrong with your game.

Stellar Dawn is slated for a 2011 release. No details given.

The Old Republic is slated for a 2011 release. No details given.

Compare these two websites:

http://www.stellardawn.com/

http://www.swtor.com/

And tell me which upcoming sci-fi MMORPG is more likely to make their 2011 release date.

Regards, IVIilitarus