Dec

9

planetmule.com

December 9, 2009 | Leave a Comment

M.U.L.E.Although I find it hard to believe, I have heard that there are people out in the world who have never played one of the influential and ground-breaking multiplayer games of all time: Electronic Arts’ M.U.L.E.

Really? What were you people thinking?

Still, it might not have been their fault per se, after all M.U.L.E. was released in 1983 for the Atari 400/800 and C64 (as well as a few other platforms) and reputedly only sold less than 50,000 copies. And today, if you tried to find a copy of M.U.L.E. you might be hard pressed to do so. Still, I find such excuses lacking for those who fancy themselves true gamers of moderate sophistication.

But, you ask, what about people who don’t want to scour the internet looking for it? What about people who can’t afford such an awesome program, even if they could find it on ebay, or craigslist or Bijan? What about people who get I.D. 10-t errors when they try to run all but the most basic programs? What about people who don’t want to use an emulator and try to mount virtual drives because that’s something they’d rather not ask for help doing as it sounds a little bit weird when you shout it in mixed company? And finally what about those people who just don’t think it’s going to be any good because… well, because it’s just soooo old and the graphics are just not pretty enough?

Well, I’ll tell you what you can say to those people… ready for it?

planetmule.com
The folks over at planetmule.com understand those concerns and better yet, they’ve addressed them. Check out this… checklist of M.U.L.E. awesomeness!

So tell them all, M.U.L.E. is back, baby.

Now go get it!

*Editor’s note: Some people, if they looked really, really hard out there on the internet, might discover that this same post almost word for word appears on another website “straygamers.com”. Yes, I know. I wrote it there too.


 

Nov

23

1001 Crazy Game Design Ideas: #6 End Game at the Beginning of the Game

November 23, 2009 | Leave a Comment

I am trying to remember which Everquest server this happened on. I believe it was Tholuxe-Paells.

On the very first day that the server came up, I had made a human character in Qeynos and was running around in Qeynos Hills happily bashing wolves and snakes and whatever I could get my level 5 sword on when a strange thing happened: I ended up on a 30 person raid.

You see, in Norrath’s Qeynos Hills, a Necromancer named Pyzjn will rarely spawn and occasionally drops a piece of rare loot which, back in the day, used to be worth a fair bit. Unfortunately, Pyzjn is about level 14 and the highest player in the zone at the time was level 8.  But since this was an expansion server full of people who had put aside higher level characters on other servers to “re-roll” as newbies, the call to arms went out across the zone and soon we had a good part of the zone organized into an impromptu raid force.

It was a bloody fight to be sure, but in the end Pyzjn was down and there was much rejoicing (no real loot to speak of) and then about 30 seconds later everyone went back to the business of trying to level up their little characters to get up to the “end-game” part where we could do this raid thing all over again.

Read more


 

Apr

13

Just because I don’t want to lose this:

April 13, 2009 | Leave a Comment

A link to someone as upset as I get over video game DRM:http://www.metacafe.com/watch/yt-mt4BpnfAN-o/how_anti_piracy_screws_over_people_who_buy_pc_games_flv/


 

Oct

29

Update: Back to Everquest

October 29, 2008 | 2 Comments

Four weeks ago, some friends and myself decided to dust off our Everquest subscriptions from days gone by and try to take back Norrath from whoever it is that thinks they own it now. I must say that I am having a blast playing it again and I am finding it much easier to overlook its “problems” and just enjoy it as a pleasant one night a week diversion. But the new Norrath isn’t quite as we remember it. Not only is the game sporting 15 total expansions (holy crap!), but there have been some significant mechanics changes to the game which greatly impact the play.

Read more


 

Sep

21

Sad times in Noob-land

September 21, 2007 | Leave a Comment

I recently took a new job as a web developer and unfortunately this little page has made its way down to the bottom of the list of projects that I have to work on in my spare time. Part of the reason is because I don’t have much spare time to spare. As a corollary, in the spare time I do have, it’s hard to find minutes to even play video games, never mind ruminate on their implementation and improvement.

Hopefully, I’ll be back here again soon.


 

Jun

26

Owning the game

June 26, 2007 | 1 Comment

I’ve been playing UFO:Afterlight a bit obsessively lately, if you call 8 hours a day for the past three days “obsessively.”

And although later I might post a review of sorts for the game, this isn’t it.

This is a gripe which applies to Afterlight and a philosophy which pervades games everywhere.

My complaint is that the game will not let me be a part of it. Oh sure, I can play it. I can go through the missions and research the technology and fight the monsters and win, but it’s all according to the developer’s vision, not mine.

Read more


 

Jun

12

All I really needed to know I learned in the Sims 2

June 12, 2007 | Leave a Comment

So for while there (before I took my most recent hiatus from this little blog), I’m somewhat reluctant to admit, I had been playing the Sims 2 quite a bit. What I am even more reluctant to admit is that upon reflecting on how I play the Sims 2, I decided to make some changes to what I do in my real life.

But how could I not? I can’t help but notice is that life is pretty good for Sim-Noob. He looks good, he’s got lots of cool stuff, women dig him and he’s a luminary in his career field of choice (And he’s a doctor… not an aspiring gamer).

Sim-Noob seems to have it much better than RL (real life) Noob. In the real, I’ve got a few extra pounds, am constantly low on cash and have a career stuck in a continual state of restarting.

So as I was watching the rise and blossom of Sim-Noob, I could not help but think, “what if I were to simply do what Sim-Noob does, how would life turn out then?”

Read more


 

May

20

Oh sure, I’d like one…

May 20, 2007 | 1 Comment

Optimus KeyboardIn case you haven’t heard yet, the Optimus Maximus keyboards may now be pre-ordered for delivery in December. The keyboards feature an individual LED on each key which may be programmed to display anything which will fit on their 48 x 48 pixel screens. The keyboards also feature a pre-order price tag of approximately $1564, or more than three times the annual per capita income of folks living in India.

Read more


 

May

16

Un-installed Vanguard just now

May 16, 2007 | Leave a Comment

I guess it was the recent announcement that Sony had acquired Vanguard developer Sigil Games that was the impetus behind the decision to finally erase the already dusty and unused Vanguard: Saga of Heroes from my hard drive. Not that I needed to reclaim the space for anything, but just because I figure that I likely won’t be going back in the near future.

I had already canceled my subscription because Sony decided to hike up the rates on their Station Pass, which I was a subscriber to despite only playing Vanguard at the time. I hadn’t even thought about it since then, I can’t believe that was only back in March, it seems like such a long time ago that I played it.

But to finally un-install it made me just a touch melancholic. Maybe it’s the rainy New Hampshire evening that’s got me a bit down already, or maybe it’s the idea of “the Vision” which could have been, but never quite materialized from the murkiness of the wonderful daydream that it must have been and that many of us at one time shared. Read more


 

May

16

Lexicon page removed

May 16, 2007 | 3 Comments

For those of you who visit the site often, you may notice that a link to page called “Lexicon,” where I had defined exactly 6 game design terms, has been removed.

After surfing over to Nerfbat’s page, I noticed that he recently updated his own MMO Lexicon page, which is a wiki format page allowing the community to stock it with content. Well heck, if someone out there is already getting the community involved in defining the various MMO terminology, I might as well just link to that instead.

And I believe they even have more than 6 terms defined already!


 

« Previous Entries
 

Search


Noob


noob - aka: William Mackie on the Bass River in Dennis, MA.
noob - aka: William Mackie