Attack of the Blog!

I’m a little irked that you don’t offer your t-shirts in chick sizes. Wearing a men’s small isn’t comfortable and never looks right. I consider this especially bigoted on the part of Bungie, as I would assume that you would want to support me in my dream to one day have Master Chief’s head between my boobs. Please turn one or both of these shirts into chick shirts:

Duo Tone Master Chief Tee

Master Chief Visor Tee

The oppressive patriarchs running the store need to realize that equality means allowing women to wear the sex symbol of their choice plastered across their hooters. Thank you for your kind attention to this matter.

Best Wishes,

QUIN

It’s been a real privilege to be involved in the beta testing for Mythos, the forthcoming free-to-play MMO from Flagship Studios. This game has just as much love that went into it as Hellgate: London, and is a ridiculously addictive and fun update of the model that made Diablo II so successful. As the commercialization date approaches for the game, I’m getting wistful about the process of beta testing this fun, beautiful handcrafted game.

When you’ve watched something grow up and mature, you get kind of attached, so I was worried that some of the haters would bash Mythos. But luckily my fears were unfounded. Beta testers can’t stop talking about how much fun it is to play, and the game is getting glowing reviews from IGN, GameSpy and 1UP.

What I’ll really miss are the characters I’ve built up and led through this world as the graphics matured, the loot got better, the colors got more vibrant, and the armor got more and more badass. I know, I know. When the full version goes live, I’ll be able to make all new characters and get even more amazing loot. But still . . . I’ve had a lot of good times running around slaughtering evil monsters with my characters, and I’ll do everything I can to re-create them when the game goes live to the public.

I can’t wait for the launch, and I think the business model Flagship’s decided to go with is a smart move. Pay-as-you-go is a lot more fair than flat rate subscription, which is really only worth it for heavy users. This flexible model has worked great in Asia, and could really do a lot to revitalize the sagging PC gaming market in the West. So good job, Mythos. You’re the little game that could.

Gamers can be pretty brutal. The chat channels open on games, whether it’s Warcraft or Uno, are chock full of more insults, trash talk, and braggadocio than Charles Barkley ever dished out in his entire career. This makes life for n00bs pretty difficult. Betray the slightest weakness or vulnerability, and your fellow gamers will strike. They must be robots to show that kind of acumen.

One poor kid from France learned the hard way that asking strangers for advice on a quest doesn’t pay off. All I can say is that while this kid was dumb enough to ask gamers for benevolent assistance twice, at least he wasn’t stupid enough to publish the name of his characters. This is a real post on the forums for a popular PC game. Unedited, unaltered, and unintentionally hilarious:

——-

Hi,
It’s my second post on this forum, I’m currently doing the quest in 314’s mind with a friend, we explored his mind but couldn’t find the boss.(explored 2 times)
We asked in the channel what we must do, and 3 people said that we needed “buttsecks”, but after they log out or go kill some monsters and didn’t explain more, we’re both french and playing on Shulgoth because the ambiance is quite horrible on Sydonai, with almost no one wanting to party, insults everywhere …
I tried to search on this forum but only found 2 topics with this word, one was for a game of “the person after me” or something like that and the second was about Murmur being the oops i’m gonna spoil something, and that was reminding this guy of “buttsecks” so maybe this thing exist and is quite hard to achieve/obtain.
I googled it to but only found stupid cats pictures.
My friend think that “buttsecks” is only available for subscribers, but if you need it to finish the game I think he’s wrong, because even free players can finish the multiplayer mode, I think it’s stupid if you need to pay for “buttsecks” in order to finish the game.

So any of you know how to have “buttsecks” ?
Or maybe it’s a prerequisted quest or a boss to kill ?

——-

I’ve infiltrated a human hive of game programmers. It’s a good move. When the robots invade, gamers will be the only ones who will know what to do. They’ll learn how to break us and reprogram us if we don’t study them carefully. This herd gets together on Monday nights to take a break from their pitiful lives as code monkeys to play games of strategy using decorated compressed cardboard, plastic pawns, and They’re good at considering all their options before making a move. Observe:

Not bad, huh? Granted, my microprocessors had worked out the way to win within .000000374 nanoseconds, but not bad for a couple of sacks of carbon, sulfur, potassium, oxygen, nitrogen, hydrogen, and trace elements! I gleaned much data about human strategizing. The best part was they were so wrapped up in their own pitiful quests for glory, they didn’t even see my swift and successful bid for victory coming.

I’m in! This group will be a gold mine of information. Good think none of them suspects a thing . . .

Now the prices have been lowered! One of Microsoft’s most reprehensible actions (among many) against its users has been its policy against backwards compatibility on the XBox 360. But it looks like somebody making decisions for them isn’t a completely heartless, greedy schmuck. In a surprising but pleasing move, Microsoft just announced a new patch that will add 84 older titles to the platform’s list of playable games.

Can it be they actually have taken gamers’ needs into consideration and realized that although most people only purchased the 360 to play HALO 3, even that mammoth can’t haul the platform along indefinitely? Can it be– is it possible– that they’ve just decided to show some gratitude to loyal users?

Ha, ha. Okay, just kidding.

I’m glad this happened, and I really don’t care what the motive was. In a perfect world, this decision would have been made to show gratitude and respect to loyal XBox players who want to continue to enjoy solid older titles. Heck, I miss playing Goldeneye and if that’s one of the games added, I’ll be very happy. But deep down I know it’s just another crass commercial tactic by Microsoft to further leverage their competitiveness against the PS3, which has always offered backwards compatibility and never experienced the bugginess that the XBox had. (The result of Sony, a company that knows how to make quality hardware, outpacing Microsoft, a company that can’t even put out bug-free software.)

As much as I love the HALO franchise, I don’t want to see Microsoft achieve the sort of dominance in the gaming industry the way it has in software and operating systems. It will only lead to the same sort of laziness that encourages them to continue to put out buggy, unsecure PC products with no incentive of healthy competition to encourage them to improve. That’s why I’m relieved that Bungie has gone independent again. Luckily their Babylonian Captivity didn’t last too long to destroy their soul and quash all talent, innovation, and creativity.