Hey Gamers. Happy New Year!!!

I hope this finds you all well and employed. Last year sucked in my opinion.

If you are not employed and you are looking for a job, BEWARE people are not hiring MMO games. See Link http://www.tumeroks.com/employers-not-hiring-wow-mmo-or-fps-gamers/

Now normally I leave the blogging to Endymian the master of words and games here at GU, however I saw this and it irked the crap out of me, and I thought I would share my opinions. (Stands on Soap Box)

I sat at home reading this yesterday, thinking to myself wow, how out of touch have we as a society become. Are we really dealing with all of the “Jack Thompsons” of the world? I mean ok I get it, we always see the articles of those people who let World of Warcraft or Everquest take over their lives; mind you these are the same type of people that would let drinking, gambling etc take over their lives an addictive personality per se. But does that mean that companies stop hiring anyone that has a drink maybe once a week or a beer with dinner? No. So what they are saying is if I like to go play Blackjack once a week at the Casino, I have a gambling problem and cannot effectively work? No.

What about articles written on how to effectively lead using MMO tactics? I don’t see them being taken into consideration. Seriously, I have dealt with some people that have very effective working relationships with people due to learning how to deal with all the whining 14 year old crap that goes on in a game, and any of you that play MMO’s or FPS’s know exactly what I mean. People will effectively learn to control kids that talk LIKE THIS AT ALL TIMES OMFGWTFBBQ!!!!11!!1! If you can control that and keep everyone happy in your group, trust me you can control an obnoxious subordinate.

So my question is when is it our time? I keep hearing “Oh these are the kids of the future” well ladies and gentleman these “kids” are in their mid 20s -30s, we are ready to be the future and to influence the world with our knowledge and our gifts. Maybe the next CEO of your company will be an avid World of Warcraft Player…so what? Maybe there will be new start up companies, as there are thousands a year just in the US alone, that will be highly successful, and what if the CEO of them plays Everquest? What then?

In fact lets look at me, I am an avid World of Warcraft player, yet I make time for my family, run GU and work a full time job, did I mention I go to school full time as well? Yet ladies and gentlemen I promise you I do not keep socks under my desk for that bathroom run I just can’t get to, nor do I keep a full stock of hot pockets (although they are tasty).

All I can say to you gamers is this, Its 2009, take control of the reigns use your knowledge from school, from life, and yes from video games, go out there do well, and lets show the previous generation that yes we are capable of running this world and will do so with the flair of video games and other experiences to back us. “Its time for Change.”

Thanks-

Dragonkitty

From all of us here at Gamer’s University.

Here are some new years resolutions for you, if you need any ideas

http://www.2pstart.com/2008/12/31/gamers-resolutions/

Cheers!

‘The Returners’ is a group that I have been keeping my eye on for several years now, ever since I got the wild idea in highschool that making a Final Fantasy-based tabletop roleplaying game by myself was a good idea. Not only was it not a good idea to try this on my own, the returners were already well into their second edition and were doing a damn good job.

Today, ‘The Returners’ has already released their third edition of this game and it looks better than ever. The last time I looked, it was in Beta and I don’t see any notes regarding it so I am assuming that it has been fully released.

I have always been a fan of Final Fantasy moreso in the past than today, sadly, but the golden age games will always keep me playing; and that is why The Returners Final Fantasy RPG is so incredible, whether you’re a fan of the early days games, or the more recent obscurities, this game beautifully melds all aspects together in a rather satisfying way.

The tabletop game will always be one of my favorite mediums because of the fond memories I have playing Vampire: The Masquerade and the like with my friends. Regardless of whether or not you are familiar with tabletop RPGs, if you have ever liked Final Fantasy, get some friends together and give this a try. It’s truly something else.

It is an ongoing and very social project, they are usually looking for people to help out too. Also, it’s free!

A few weeks ago, I said I would write an installment about why I particularly dislike the game-retail giant Gamestop. So much so, that when confronted with the suggestion that I get a friend a $30 giftcard to gamestop (since it was pretty much the only game store in his town) I decided on my own that I would rather just buy him the game he wanted for $60 from a different store than let Gamestop hang onto my interest-free $30 indefinitely.

The reasons I hate them so much are several fold. Many can be observed in the way they treat their customers, especially when they screw up a reservation and for all intents and purposes it is their problem to fix…and dont. Other issues are a little deeper, and probably would go unnoticed by me if I wasn’t a Business major and can’t go anywhere without seeing those details. Others I have heard from people I know that have worked for them in the past, and others are their own dirty little secrets which you can take with a grain of salt on the word of others, or accept as truth when you look at Gamestop’s outstanding track record.

In any case, it all gets distilled by this fellow named JohnRazor. He’s made a series of videos that, to many, are old news. But if you are looking for the first time this is a very gritty and (in my opinion) very real look at how Gamestop actually operates and takes advantage of consumers as well as their own employees. Call it a “stupid tax” if you want, but a lot of the things they do range from “not nice” to “pretty goddamn deplorable”. What it really boils down to is “I won’t shop there anymore, and I don’t think you should either, and here’s why!”

These videos have been allegedly pulled from youtube, probably due to some not-surprising legal threat. But the videos on GameTrailers.com are alive and well. Part one can be seen HERE and subsequent videos (there are MANY, don’t worry) are not difficult to find. Just search for Zero Originality and/or JohnRazor to find them all.

If you are wondering if you have seen this kind of cartoon before, you probably have. The style is lifted from Internet superstar Ben “Yahtzee” Croshaw’s series “Zero Punctuation” on The Escapist. JohnRazor admits early on that he uses the simple style because he is no good at animation and it is just a simple medium he wants to borrow peacefully; and in reality it doesn’t detract from the message at all. Regardless, Yahtzee’s original game review videos are hilarious and he has been making me laugh for quite some time now. Check his stuff out too while you’re at it.

Hope everyone had a great Xmas, or other such December holiday. (X is a variable defined by the square root of the sum of all religious holidays.)

(Except Festivus. I hated Seinfeld.)

As I continue to froth at the mouth for the Starcraft II beta to begin, I was informed of a yummy little video of the Alpha version in action.

Check it.

I’m torn between the awesome look of the gameplay and the hilarious commentator that loses his mind when the Terran marine starts shooting at a probe in the first few minutes. Either way, this is awesome footage.

Hey everybody, I’m back. Longer posts later this week about my trip to Disney. But for now, I thought this was pretty cool:

Pink Tentacle had an awesome article about a team of Japanese scientists that performed serious awesome by finding a way to “reconstruct the images inside a person’s mind and display them on a computer monitor.”

“The scientists were able to reconstruct various images viewed by a person by analyzing changes in their cerebral blood flow. Using a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) machine, the researchers first mapped the blood flow changes that occurred in the cerebral visual cortex as subjects viewed various images held in front of their eyes. Subjects were shown 400 random 10 x 10 pixel black-and-white images for a period of 12 seconds each. While the fMRI machine monitored the changes in brain activity, a computer crunched the data and learned to associate the various changes in brain activity with the different image designs.

Then, when the test subjects were shown a completely new set of images, such as the letters N-E-U-R-O-N, the system was able to reconstruct and display what the test subjects were viewing based solely on their brain activity.”

This might scare some people, because it’s one step closer to the tinfoil-hat nightmare of mind-reading neural implants. But as a Gamer, I am obligated to notice that this is also one step closer to putting images into the brain as well.

Oh yeah. Gimme some of that Instanced-PVP.

Er, sorry.

Check it out HERE

Since I am going to be out of town all next week, you all get a special double-post today!

This one is about something I just saw in the store right now while I was buying Gears of War 2 for my friend’s birthday.

It’s Donkey Kong! It’’s Jenga! It’s awesome! It’s HERE

Donkey Kong Jenga combines the excitement of Jenga with a retro Donkey Kong twist, each player plays with a little Mario peg that advances up to the top of the tower as instructed by a spinner, which will simultaneously tell you how many bricks to remove and how many spaces to move up the tower. It looks like a blast and anything retro has a great shelf presence. I just got one for my kids for Xmas, and it was only $19.99 at the store I found it at. (Amazon has it for ~$25)

It looks gorgeous. I love Monopoly to death, but it is awesome to see a non-Monopoly game/license mashup once in a while. More please!

See you in a week! I’ll be in Florida on my honeymoon until the 21st, upon my return I shall write about my visit to a true Gamer haven for the kid in all of us, Disney World’s DisneyQuest. But not to worry, hardcore gamers, for I will also balance out any happy-time fairyland feelings you may experience with a long discussion about why I hate GameStop.

Till then, Insert Coin!

BBC NEWS wrote a fancy article about gaming addiction last month.

I thought I’d say a piece about it because this is a topic that I hold very dear and take seriously, I wrote a couple research papers about it in highschool and I’m pleased to see that they agree with me that gaming “addiction”, for the most part, is a crock of crap.

“Mr Bakker believes that this kind of cross-addiction affects only 10% of gamers. For the other 90% who may spend four hours a day or more playing games such as World of Warcraft, he no longer thinks addiction counselling is the way to treat these people…the more we work with these kids the less I believe we can call this addiction. What many of these kids need is their parents and their school teachers - this is a social problem“

Thank you, Mr Bakker. You may have created the first institution to treat “gaming addiction” but at least you recognize that most people that “have it” just “don’t”. I take note of the way the article reads “social problem” and not “disease” because in most cases, it is not a disease at all. It’s social irresponsibility on the part of either the affected, or those around him or her. Those who are actually “gaming addicts” tend to have what is called an “addictive personality” and their “addiction” turns out to have very little to actually do with video games themselves, as some fanatic lawyers and idiot politicians would have you believe. For this, I tip my hat to you Mr. Bakker. Well done. As much as gaming is a part of who I am, it is a complete pain in the ass to listen to the whining of ignorant parents who claim that it is destroying the minds of children, et cetera; take some personal responsibility. I play World of Warcraft. I also have two college degrees and a full time job. So there. Also, I just enjoy seeing made-up diseases getting exposed for what they really are.

“Mr Bakker sees a time when addiction centres like Smith & Jones could close down if parents and adults in the community took more responsibility for the habits of their children.”

Bingo.

Read all about it HERE.

(In case you missed the not-so-subtle link above. This little gem has got me rrrreeal excited.)

Good morning everybody. Over the weekend, I had the pleasure of trying out the new World of Warcraft Miniatures Game. I grabbed a starter set and two boosters and headed home with Dragonkitty to open them up.

First of all, I’d like to say that before I played, I hadn’t really done a lot of research about how the game worked, I asked some people that might have known but they only had little bits and pieces of information. Before playing, I was actually expecting something along the lines of Heroclix or Mageknight, two games that I have tried and are marvellous in their own right, but didn’t hold my attention long. Much to my surprise, and delight, the World of Warcraft Miniatures game is very unlike Heroclix and Mageknight, it is very unique and combines a lot of elements from other games that I have always enjoyed.

Unlike a lot of Miniatures games, WoW Minis is played on a board; and UDE is being cool enough to offer every map they create for free download here if you want to see what I’m talking about. Each starter set is the same, Four figures (two Horde, two Alliance), one map (the same one that you can download on the site, right now), Six “Ubases” (the figures are modular, and fit into the bases instead of each figure having its own click base), a rulebook, and the cards for each of the figures. Starter packs are $25 to $30 but contain everything you need for two people to play a full game.

Each booster comes with three random figures (both of my packs contained 3 Alliance figs, I don’t know if they’re all supposed to be one faction or not) and a random sample card for the World of Warcraft Trading Card Game. Booster packs are $15 to $20.

There is also allegedly a Deluxe starter set that is $40, but I have not seen one in stores yet.

Each figure is represented by a card that details its stats and abilities. Additional, more modular cards represent abilities and can be customised to create an “action bar” of skills that are useable during play, these cards are restricted based on class, race, spec, etc. Kind of like the TCG.

Anyone who has played White Wolf games will probably understand the combat rolls right away, combat is based on a dice pool of 10 sided dice, anything rolled 4 or above is a “success” and counts as 1 point of damage or healing and results of 10 make the action a “crit” and add additional effects as stated on the cards. The defended then gets to roll Armor (for melee damage) or Resist (for magic damage) to try to prevent or “soak” damage. Winning is based on victory points, and the amount you need to win varies by how strong the figures in your party are as respresented by an amount of “Honor” on each figure’s card. You must get an amount of points equal to your party’s Honor to win.

Another incredibly intuitive mechanic is how the game handles cooldowns. Every action has a “time cost” and every figure base has a counter for health, as well as a 1-10 time counter. When you act, you advance your time counter on your figure. Every round, there is a master clock on the board that advances 1-10, all the figures whose counters match 1 when the counter is 1 get to act, then when they all act and advance their counters however many ticks their actions cost (usually 2-4) then the master clock goes to 2, and all the 2s get to act. It’s amazing, and an idea that solves so many problems I have ran into trying to design games that incorporate time costs for actions. I wish I had thought of it first.

My only complaint about the game is in the Ubases upon which the figures rest. The figures don’t exactly “snap” in like I feel that they should, and they are prone to fall off the bases during play, which normally wouldn’t be a big deal, but the window to track health is on the bottom of each figure, and the numbers for health are all around the top of the Ubase, so unless you know exactly what the health of that character was, you just lost the count if the base is ever separated from the figure. Disappointing, but I’m sure Upper Deck will improve the design for the next set. They are pretty good about that.

I am a big WoW TCG player, but at the moment, I am much, much more excited about this Miniatures game. I am eager to try it out in a tournament setting and will report on my experience, with so many Alliance figures from my first purchase here I can probably make a pretty decent Alliance party, so we’ll see how it pans out.

Final verdict on this one: An expensive hobby, but one hell of a great game. Try it out at your local game store to see if it’s your bag, or maybe get just a starter pack to try it out before making a huge investment. Two thumbs up from Gamer’s University.

Hello everyone, just a quick note to let everyone know that I have updated The Molten Core with a slight bugfix and have posted a new installer exe for you all.

I am working on getting the patch maker to do what I want it to do so you won’t have to uninstall/reinstall every time I post an update, but for now it will ease a lot of complaints about the difficulty of the ninth boss at least

Thanks and enjoy!

(If for whatever reason the game suddenly doesn’t work anymore, as always please email me asap! Thanks!)