Like Kleps, I'm seeing a substantial uptick in spam comments that are getting through Google's spam filter on the blog. Historically, the filter has been very good at its job, but recently the upper hand seems to have gone to the spammers. This is a problem because the one thing Google's spam filter has NOT been good at historically is wasting my time by sending me emails to notify me of comments that it subsequently put into the spam filter (meaning that when I spend my time to go check, the comment is already gone). I get 20 emails per day containing spam comments and until recently none of then had been getting through, but now I'm coming back a few days later and finding that 10% are - which adds up to several spam comments on every post.
I'm disappointed by this outcome because I personally am not a fan of being forced to log in to share my thoughts, and I've gotten some very insightful comments from anonymous readers over the years. Unfortunately, the signal to noise has just gotten prohibitive of late.
Showing posts with label housekeeping. Show all posts
Showing posts with label housekeeping. Show all posts
A Sad End For Darth Hater?
It's Friday night, which would ordinarily mean a new episode of the Darth Hater SWTOR podcast to download. However, in an abrupt turn of events, unconfirmed but plausible rumors on reddit indicate there may never be another episode of the show.
Details are extremely sparse - all we know is that the site has not updated in 2013, including failure to cover this week's patch (normally a mainstay of their daily updates). The Reddit rumors indicate that most or all of the staff have been dismissed. Unless I missed it, there was no direct indication that the site was in trouble. However, the hosts did spend their presumptive final episode reflecting on both the game's first year of release and their experiences over the show's 3+ year run - suggesting that perhaps this possibility was somewhere on their minds.
We will probably never know enough information to determine whether stones should be thrown at the Curse network, which picked up the site in September 2011. I'd imagine that hosting the podcasts and images along with paying the staff cost Curse some amount of money, while advertising revenue was very likely down due to the game's limited success. It's a sad irony that, after spending a year covering layoffs of Bioware developers - many of whom the team got to know personally - the podcast crew may have gotten the same treatment. Even if Curse has future plans for the site, their failure to let the team say a proper farewell to the community they created is disappointing.
As a blogger who plays many games, I'm dependent on high quality sites and podcasts like Darth Hater to stay informed about day to day events. Beyond traveling to cover conventions at personal expense, the show made an unprecedented accomplishment - the coverage of SWTOR's launch came in episode number 105. I.e. they released over two years worth of weekly episodes about an MMO that had not yet released. Between the years of dedication and expense - and the reality that only an intellectual property like Star Wars could possible provide enough material to talk about for that long - this benchmark may never be surpassed.
Best wishes to the team, wherever you may wander, and many thanks for your years of hard work.
Details are extremely sparse - all we know is that the site has not updated in 2013, including failure to cover this week's patch (normally a mainstay of their daily updates). The Reddit rumors indicate that most or all of the staff have been dismissed. Unless I missed it, there was no direct indication that the site was in trouble. However, the hosts did spend their presumptive final episode reflecting on both the game's first year of release and their experiences over the show's 3+ year run - suggesting that perhaps this possibility was somewhere on their minds.
We will probably never know enough information to determine whether stones should be thrown at the Curse network, which picked up the site in September 2011. I'd imagine that hosting the podcasts and images along with paying the staff cost Curse some amount of money, while advertising revenue was very likely down due to the game's limited success. It's a sad irony that, after spending a year covering layoffs of Bioware developers - many of whom the team got to know personally - the podcast crew may have gotten the same treatment. Even if Curse has future plans for the site, their failure to let the team say a proper farewell to the community they created is disappointing.
As a blogger who plays many games, I'm dependent on high quality sites and podcasts like Darth Hater to stay informed about day to day events. Beyond traveling to cover conventions at personal expense, the show made an unprecedented accomplishment - the coverage of SWTOR's launch came in episode number 105. I.e. they released over two years worth of weekly episodes about an MMO that had not yet released. Between the years of dedication and expense - and the reality that only an intellectual property like Star Wars could possible provide enough material to talk about for that long - this benchmark may never be surpassed.
Best wishes to the team, wherever you may wander, and many thanks for your years of hard work.
New Year's Resolutions for 2013
My annual New Year's Resolution post is usually lengthy but not that insightful - half of the items are short term goals that get done soon afterwards and the other half are more pie-in-the sky things that don't happen at all. My year for 2012 can be summarized with two lines of facts:
- Prior to October: Level capped characters in seven different MMO's simultaneously, posting on the blog every 2-3 days (11-18 posts/month)
- Post-October: Level capped characters remain in only three MMO's due to expansions I have yet to catch up to, posting to the blog once or twice per week, +1 infant
I'm happy with this turn of events, but it does put realistic constraints on what I can aspire to in-game during the coming year. A few resolutions, which are more qualitative than specific:
Work on what I have
2012 wasn't all bad when it came to trying new things. I started and capped characters in STO and SWTOR, along with some very brief (often one-evening) visits to Aion, Tera, EQ1, and TSW. That said, it was a tough year to carve out time for anything new, and that does not figure to change in 2013.
I currently have what I need (access and game time as appropriate) for content I have yet to use in WoW, LOTRO, DCUO, TSW, DDO, STO, and SWTOR. I don't expect any of these titles to fold in 2013, but it really makes more sense to focus on my backlog at this point. I'm fine with my budget where it currently sits, but it's pointless to collect more stuff that I don't have time to play - the best sale price is still a waste if I don't use the content.
Learn when NOT to beat the business model
While my time is scarce, I do get enjoyment out of snagging a good bargain. Sometimes, when the payoff is high enough, it can make sense to grind in-game to "beat the business model".
For instance, according to SWTOR Spy's Cartel calculator, I have unlocked more than 10,000 Cartel Coins' worth of stuff by purchasing the relevant unlocks on the GTN for in-game credits. This would have cost me $80 in the cash shop, while species and inventory unlocks I picked up for alts during my last month of subscription time could potentially have cost another $40. I did spend a fair amount of extra time in game sending my companions on slicing missions and farming daily quests (which also awarded several high end pieces of gear for my main) to pay for all of these unlocks, but this was definitely a major payoff for my time.
Even so, cash shops are a reality of the market today, and I should really make better use of them. If an unlock is purely cosmetic, it makes sense to do without or set it aside as a reward for earning the credits in game. When it comes to exp potions and other things that affect the rate of advancement, it's worth asking whether the game is worth playing if it's worth paying to play it less. However, when an unlock actually impacts quality of life - e.g. not being able to harvest materials I encounter in the world because one of my crewskill slots is locked - it really makes more sense to pay a couple dollars and move on.
Focus on my perspective
This blog will celebrate its 1000th post early next year and its fifth birthday in the spring. While limited time has been the most immediate cause for my current drop in posts, the results are somewhat positive.
I don't view reporting the news as one of this blog's strengths. I will post immediate reactions sometimes, especially if I have an opinion I'm not seeing from other folks, but often the "breaking news" of the MMO world does not even come with enough detail to support in-depth analysis. Because I know that most of my posts will not be timely, I'm free to spend most of my limited time working on more of the big picture, such as trends that tie recent developments into past experiences.
I intentionally don't have a set format or schedule for the blog, because this is a hobby and I prefer flexibility to write what I want. That the schedule happens to support the kind of posts that I like to write is a happy coincidence.
Thanks to all of my readers, best wishes, and a happy new year!
PSA: SWTOR Racial Grandfathering
Details are presumably subject to change, but this week's SWTOR community Q&A has a previously un-answered tidbit about the game's free to play shift. Previously created characters will NOT be locked due to their species, though they will be subject to limits on character slots.
(We already knew that no classes would be restricted, so this appears to mean that you can have all of your old characters. I'd also be shocked if they did not offer character slots for sale to non-subscribers. While companies do want to preserve some incentives to subscribe, more slots means more characters, which should in principle mean more revenue, regardless of payment model.)
For players who have their eye on some of the non-human races, this is potentially a significant benefit to (re-)subscribing prior to the changeover and creating any characters that have been on your to-do list. (Personally, I plan to wait for the rumored August world event.) If you are considering trying the game in November and have your eye on a specific race, it might also be worth your while to download the newly unlimited free trial (through level 15) - no promises that these characters will also be grandfathered, but it would seem like spending effort to make sure they slam the door on the fingers of potential customers would be counterproductive.
(We already knew that no classes would be restricted, so this appears to mean that you can have all of your old characters. I'd also be shocked if they did not offer character slots for sale to non-subscribers. While companies do want to preserve some incentives to subscribe, more slots means more characters, which should in principle mean more revenue, regardless of payment model.)
For players who have their eye on some of the non-human races, this is potentially a significant benefit to (re-)subscribing prior to the changeover and creating any characters that have been on your to-do list. (Personally, I plan to wait for the rumored August world event.) If you are considering trying the game in November and have your eye on a specific race, it might also be worth your while to download the newly unlimited free trial (through level 15) - no promises that these characters will also be grandfathered, but it would seem like spending effort to make sure they slam the door on the fingers of potential customers would be counterproductive.
The Uncharted 3 Spinning Ring of Doom and the Upside to Digital Downloads
We've seen a lot of commentary about the quirks associated with Blizzard's decision to take Diablo III online only. Downtime prevents players from accessing the single player game. Digital download purchase of the game are now being subjected to restrictions intended to prevent fraud involving stolen credit card numbers - though apparently the limitations were more severe than Blizzard intended and will be relaxed. And, of course, there's the ever-convenient side-effect that an online-only game cannot be resold. All of these things are true, but let's not over-romanticize the offline physical media era.
A cautionary tale
I purchased a physical copy of Uncharted 3 for my 2.5 year old PS3-slim and was shocked and disappointed to find that it would not load. All the other disc-based games in my library play fine, so I assumed I was looking at a defective disc. I was technically beyond the exchange policy at the retailer at this point, but my wife fears no customer service agent and she was able to convince them to swap out the disc for a new copy.
I brought the new copy home and was shocked to find the same symptoms. The PS3 clock icon spins ineffectually long past when the game should have loaded, but the game never kicks in. A trip to Google revealed that the PS3 forums call this phenomena the "spinning ring of doom"- convinced that it is an issue with either the coding or the manufacture of the physical game discs. They may or may not be correct, but it appears that I am not amongst them.
I called PS3 technical support - not seriously expecting a solution to the problem - and at least came away with the real culprit. My system will load all the other game discs I have handy. It will load all the downloaded games on the device's hard drive. Then the rep told me to load up a Blu-Ray movie and sure enough, the same problem emerged. My 2.5 year old system apparently has a broken disc drive.
(Aside: The rep then attempted to give me the strong-arm hard sell for Sony's repair service, which cost over $100 - I don't remember if that included shipping or precisely how long I was going to be without my system as a result. I pointed out that I can get a new system on sale for around $250 with a game and a controller that collectively MSRP for around $100, and the guy tried to put the scare tactics on me that my game and movie downloads would not work on a new console. I pointed out that the PSN service specifically markets game downloads as tied to your account, and - caught - he said that they should but that he's heard that sometimes they don't.)
Vestigial Points of Failure
Don't get me wrong, I'm not thrilled with how this experience played out, and the results do not leave me eager to spend more money on the PS3 platform. I'm now out of pocket for a game that I can't return because it's been opened and can't play because my system won't load it.
However, the part that failed is not some fancy computing hardware or exotic cooling solution or even the machine's hard drive. The point of failure is the optical drive - a vestigial appendage whose sole contribution to the endeavor of letting me play games is to load physical media from a physical store which is taking a substantial cut of the sale price for the privilege.
Can I hypothetically trade in my working disc for something else that may or may not run on my hobbled system? Perhaps. Somehow that's not a lot of comfort right now.
A cautionary tale
I purchased a physical copy of Uncharted 3 for my 2.5 year old PS3-slim and was shocked and disappointed to find that it would not load. All the other disc-based games in my library play fine, so I assumed I was looking at a defective disc. I was technically beyond the exchange policy at the retailer at this point, but my wife fears no customer service agent and she was able to convince them to swap out the disc for a new copy.
I brought the new copy home and was shocked to find the same symptoms. The PS3 clock icon spins ineffectually long past when the game should have loaded, but the game never kicks in. A trip to Google revealed that the PS3 forums call this phenomena the "spinning ring of doom"- convinced that it is an issue with either the coding or the manufacture of the physical game discs. They may or may not be correct, but it appears that I am not amongst them.
I called PS3 technical support - not seriously expecting a solution to the problem - and at least came away with the real culprit. My system will load all the other game discs I have handy. It will load all the downloaded games on the device's hard drive. Then the rep told me to load up a Blu-Ray movie and sure enough, the same problem emerged. My 2.5 year old system apparently has a broken disc drive.
(Aside: The rep then attempted to give me the strong-arm hard sell for Sony's repair service, which cost over $100 - I don't remember if that included shipping or precisely how long I was going to be without my system as a result. I pointed out that I can get a new system on sale for around $250 with a game and a controller that collectively MSRP for around $100, and the guy tried to put the scare tactics on me that my game and movie downloads would not work on a new console. I pointed out that the PSN service specifically markets game downloads as tied to your account, and - caught - he said that they should but that he's heard that sometimes they don't.)
Vestigial Points of Failure
Don't get me wrong, I'm not thrilled with how this experience played out, and the results do not leave me eager to spend more money on the PS3 platform. I'm now out of pocket for a game that I can't return because it's been opened and can't play because my system won't load it.
However, the part that failed is not some fancy computing hardware or exotic cooling solution or even the machine's hard drive. The point of failure is the optical drive - a vestigial appendage whose sole contribution to the endeavor of letting me play games is to load physical media from a physical store which is taking a substantial cut of the sale price for the privilege.
Can I hypothetically trade in my working disc for something else that may or may not run on my hobbled system? Perhaps. Somehow that's not a lot of comfort right now.
Seatech Astronomy
The Secret World launch is less than two weeks away, and the only public information I've seen on the beta (as opposed to the relatively open weekend events) is a few blogposts from folks who have beta keys to give away. One of my readers sent me an email containing a pair of such keys. Due to the presumably limited time left to take advantage of these, I'm not going to do anything creative with em - first two emails to my inbox (grnarmadillo@gmail.com) get a key, I'll edit this when they're gone.
Winners have been identified and contacted, keep your eyes peeled if you're still looking, seems like there are more of these things going around as it draws to a close.
Winners have been identified and contacted, keep your eyes peeled if you're still looking, seems like there are more of these things going around as it draws to a close.
PAX East 2012: Things to do, people to meet
As a first time convention-goer, I had very little idea of what to expect of the PAX East extravaganza in Boston.
In some ways, it was not what I expected. There were no major game announcements that I'm aware of, and even the stuff on display on the show floor tended to be minor updates to information we already had. The demos and panels that were present were trapped behind massive lines that required substantial commitment. Meanwhile, though some MMO's had senior developers manning their booths, it wasn't really an opportunity to ask all the hard-hitting questions that professional journalists dare not mention - though satisfying the fans is a plus, these folks were there to promote their products. Even the swag was relatively limited (though my decision to steer clear of lines may have influenced that, and the swag I did get was very good stuff indeed).
As the song says, you can't always get what you want. Even so, the things I found were in many ways better than the the things I might have expected.
The Road to PAX
The lowpoint of my PAX experience came very early. Given unlimited time and money, I would definitely have preferred to fly in a day early and take the show at a measured, easy pace. Instead, I work up at 4 AM to fly to Boston and arrive at the show floor around 11 AM - already a non-trivial day.
I arrived to find that they had run out of the day's allotment of swag bags. Concerned that the MMO loot might find a similar fate, I set off on a rapid fire run around the perimeter, snagging codes from The Secret World, SWTOR, LOTRO, DDO, and Tera (none of which, as it happens, were in any danger of running out). The one advantage to showing up on the second day was that I already knew what to expect on the show floor - nothing major and new.
At this point it was lunch time, so I grabbed an overpriced and mediocre convention center sandwich and wondered whether I had made a big mistake in spending the time and money to come to a place that, on a first pass, didn't have much to see.
Hope in unexpected places
With lowered expectations, I began my post-lunch circuit of the show at the Turbine booth. I had a brief conversation with some DDO folks - not really my primary objective since the expansion is really aimed well above my characters' heads - before getting in line for the LOTRO hoodie promo. Anyone willing to wish LOTRO a happy 5th birthday on camera was given a free hooded sweatshirt.
I asked the guy in the WB Games shirt watching the line and greeting people whether he posted in the forums. He said he did, under the name Berephon. Yes, the lore lead for the game, maker of the famous timeline of events that the public can't have, was smiling and waving at dozens of people who had no idea who he was.
I promptly extracted a few chuckles out of the man by asking a question that I've been dying to hit him with for years - how much time it take a normal person in Middle Earth to do all the travel that occurs in the epic book questlines. After a good laugh, he conceded that the travel time was something that they just had to let go of in terms of the game design and the lore. I noted that Elrond was right when he tells the player, at the start of Volume 3, that they are the only one capable of gathering all the rangers in time.
It was a small moment, but the start of finding the hidden little moments that made this show worthwhile.
Dancing on chairs, and choices about lines
After stopping to listen to a panel at the SWTOR booth, I headed across the floor to see the sights and make it to Ferrel's book signing. I've been listening to the man on podcasts for years, and have even been on his show twice, but I'm not sure that I will ever be able to look at it the same way now that I know that the guy isn't kidding when he suggests things like dancing on chairs to entertain the masses. Kidding aside, it was great to finally put a face to the voice of Epic Slant.
From here, it was time to start making choices about what exactly I was prepared to wait in line to see. I was definitely starting to get tired, I already knew I had more possible activities in the evening than energy and time to do them, and I didn't want to overdo the afternoon on the show floor. I was definitely surprised by how much demand there was to attend even the smallest-seeming booths and panels at the show. I've always heard that everything at PAX has a line, and apparently this was true.
The one line I finally decided to wait in was the one to get in the Assassin's Creed III threater. All told, this took about 40 minutes, for a chance to watch a developer-narrated preview of the gameplay in a room decorated to resemble colonial barracks. The playthrough of a single sequence in the game probably took a mere five minutes or so of gameplay, but the commentary actually did manage to point out some interesting tidbits I might not have realized I was watching - efforts to make the climbable trees look more realistic, numbers of soldiers forming firing lines and shooting in formation, etc. I enjoyed the video, and collected an inflatable hatchet for my time, though I'll concede that I did not line up for any more videos or demos.
Partying with Turbine
Everything I'd heard said that Turbine throws a great party at PAX, so I'd made RSVP'ing a top priority and picked this shindig over the numerous others (including a blogger tweet-up, parties hosted by The Secret World, Curse, and Bioware, and a Jonathan Coulton concert). In a world where I had more time, I might have left the show early to nap and save some energy to hit more than one social event, but I guess I had just come to terms with the fact that attending an event as big as PAX means that you will necessarily miss some things that would have been worth going to. In any case, it appears that I chose well.
Lining up to enter the party, I noticed a familiar logo on the shirt of the guy who had walked in at the same time I did, and realized that his voice sounded familiar. Completely by accident, I had run into Chris from MMO Reporter. In addition to his role as the head of a Canadian MMO Podcast syndicate, Chris was covering the show for PC Gamer. It was interesting to hear about what he had seen (which we can all do via the podcast and upcoming videos), and he had definitely lined up way more formal interview time than I got by wandering the floor, but I was a bit surprised to hear largely the same impression I'd gotten of the show - some interesting tidbits but relatively little major news. Perhaps PAX has gotten so big these days that it's only worth paying the cost of exhibiting for the biggest titles that are gearing up their marketing pushes for launches later this year.
Chris was not the only famous podcaster in attendance. Jerry Snook - founder of DDOcast and now a member of DDO's community team - was in the house, along with longtime DDOCast PAX East correspondent Steiner-Davion and frequent guest-host Rowanheal. Meanwhile, Turbine spared no expense, booking the back room of Jillian's across the street from Fenway park, providing free drink tickets and high quality swag. (The highlight - an actual real-world cloak.) For extra amusement value, they had the TV screens that would ordinarily be showing sports in most bars in Boston playing the promos for the LOTRO and DDO expansions instead - quite an unexpected sight.
On top of all that, I ended up getting to chat with Executive Producers Fernando (DDO) and Kate (LOTRO) Paiz for the better part of ten minutes about their experiences running their games through their now famous free to play conversations. As Fernando tells it, one of the first questions the marketing people asked was how quickly they could retrofit DDO to free to play. His response was very quickly if you didn't care about the quality of the product, and fortunately a more measured response won out.
Many couples might have been nervous about working together on such a high profile, high pressure project, but Fernando claims that things very quickly got too busy for them to get in each others' way. Kate covered many of the business model systems, while Fernando worked more closely on the design and engineering side, and both had plenty of work to do. I asked whether Turbine's shared engine made it easier to repeat the process with LOTRO, and Fernando definitely agreed that having two major projects running the current engine made it easier to justify large investments in this technology. (In general, he said that LOTRO gets upgrades first, though DDO got to be the first in line during the conversion.)
Following up on this discussion, I asked Kate about the shift to the larger scale expansions in both games. She confirmed that having the highly successful expansion launch in LOTRO definitely helped make the case for undertaking the larger project in DDO. I'm still not 100% satisfied with this move, as I feel it undermines the a la carte choice of the model, but at least I can respect that they are trying more ambitious things with the larger revenue that has come under the new business model.
Winding Down
I finally headed out of the Turbine party a bit after 10 PM - perhaps a bit early by nightlife standards, but it had been a very long day and I had many sore muscles to show for it. (Ironically, Bioware may have been exceedingly clever in providing comfortable seating in a portion of the SWTOR "booth" that served as a lounge and venue for several daily panels/Q&A's. On paper it looked like a lot of underutilised space, but I wouldn't be surprised if tired convention-goers spent more time in view of the promotional videos and panels because it was a good place to rest.)
Sunday had much smaller crowds - after both Friday and Saturday sold out, there were plenty of badges to be had at the door, and I convinced my wife to tag along and demo some tabletop (yes, non-video) games. The con organizers apparently had set aside an allocation of swag bags for Sunday, so I was able to get the loot that I missed out on Saturday morning. The table top section of the convention was a real pleasant surprise - you can read reviews and buy games anywhere, but it's not every day that you can get people to teach you dozens of them just to see which ones you find interesting.
Cell phone reception at the con was sluggish, leading to delayed text message times that had Riannon and myself criss-crossing the show floor in an effort to introduce ourselves before heading out. Riannon and Pete are another duo of folks I've been hanging out with online for years, and it was great to meet them as well. That said, we were all pretty tired by this point in the con, and we all headed out our separate ways back home around lunchtime.
Overall
Far and away the best advice I got on attending the con was not to have my heart set on catching everything that was going on, as this seemed downright impossible. I know I missed any number of things due to conflicts and aversion to lines, and that was just something to come to grips with.
I saved some money through my less than optimal travel arrangements and staying with a friend in town, and I spent surprisingly little at the event itself - the Turbine swag in particular included several free items that I would have considered paying for. That said, the cost of the weekend trip still comes pretty close to the total of what I spent on MMO's last year. If not for the fact that both PAX locations happen to be in cities that my wife and I have reason to visit anyway, this trip would be very hard to justify.
That said, overall I had a good time at the con - in some ways despite the con itself. The moments that are going to stick with me are not the games or the booths, but the people. Perhaps in the same way that some of the things we do in MMO's can become fun in the right company, some of the less desirable quirks of the convention - long lines and limited information beyond what you could have read online for a fraction of the time and money - are worth overlooking.
In some ways, it was not what I expected. There were no major game announcements that I'm aware of, and even the stuff on display on the show floor tended to be minor updates to information we already had. The demos and panels that were present were trapped behind massive lines that required substantial commitment. Meanwhile, though some MMO's had senior developers manning their booths, it wasn't really an opportunity to ask all the hard-hitting questions that professional journalists dare not mention - though satisfying the fans is a plus, these folks were there to promote their products. Even the swag was relatively limited (though my decision to steer clear of lines may have influenced that, and the swag I did get was very good stuff indeed).
As the song says, you can't always get what you want. Even so, the things I found were in many ways better than the the things I might have expected.
The Road to PAX
The lowpoint of my PAX experience came very early. Given unlimited time and money, I would definitely have preferred to fly in a day early and take the show at a measured, easy pace. Instead, I work up at 4 AM to fly to Boston and arrive at the show floor around 11 AM - already a non-trivial day.
I arrived to find that they had run out of the day's allotment of swag bags. Concerned that the MMO loot might find a similar fate, I set off on a rapid fire run around the perimeter, snagging codes from The Secret World, SWTOR, LOTRO, DDO, and Tera (none of which, as it happens, were in any danger of running out). The one advantage to showing up on the second day was that I already knew what to expect on the show floor - nothing major and new.
At this point it was lunch time, so I grabbed an overpriced and mediocre convention center sandwich and wondered whether I had made a big mistake in spending the time and money to come to a place that, on a first pass, didn't have much to see.
Hope in unexpected places
With lowered expectations, I began my post-lunch circuit of the show at the Turbine booth. I had a brief conversation with some DDO folks - not really my primary objective since the expansion is really aimed well above my characters' heads - before getting in line for the LOTRO hoodie promo. Anyone willing to wish LOTRO a happy 5th birthday on camera was given a free hooded sweatshirt.
I asked the guy in the WB Games shirt watching the line and greeting people whether he posted in the forums. He said he did, under the name Berephon. Yes, the lore lead for the game, maker of the famous timeline of events that the public can't have, was smiling and waving at dozens of people who had no idea who he was.
I promptly extracted a few chuckles out of the man by asking a question that I've been dying to hit him with for years - how much time it take a normal person in Middle Earth to do all the travel that occurs in the epic book questlines. After a good laugh, he conceded that the travel time was something that they just had to let go of in terms of the game design and the lore. I noted that Elrond was right when he tells the player, at the start of Volume 3, that they are the only one capable of gathering all the rangers in time.
It was a small moment, but the start of finding the hidden little moments that made this show worthwhile.
Dancing on chairs, and choices about lines
After stopping to listen to a panel at the SWTOR booth, I headed across the floor to see the sights and make it to Ferrel's book signing. I've been listening to the man on podcasts for years, and have even been on his show twice, but I'm not sure that I will ever be able to look at it the same way now that I know that the guy isn't kidding when he suggests things like dancing on chairs to entertain the masses. Kidding aside, it was great to finally put a face to the voice of Epic Slant.
From here, it was time to start making choices about what exactly I was prepared to wait in line to see. I was definitely starting to get tired, I already knew I had more possible activities in the evening than energy and time to do them, and I didn't want to overdo the afternoon on the show floor. I was definitely surprised by how much demand there was to attend even the smallest-seeming booths and panels at the show. I've always heard that everything at PAX has a line, and apparently this was true.
The one line I finally decided to wait in was the one to get in the Assassin's Creed III threater. All told, this took about 40 minutes, for a chance to watch a developer-narrated preview of the gameplay in a room decorated to resemble colonial barracks. The playthrough of a single sequence in the game probably took a mere five minutes or so of gameplay, but the commentary actually did manage to point out some interesting tidbits I might not have realized I was watching - efforts to make the climbable trees look more realistic, numbers of soldiers forming firing lines and shooting in formation, etc. I enjoyed the video, and collected an inflatable hatchet for my time, though I'll concede that I did not line up for any more videos or demos.
Partying with Turbine
Everything I'd heard said that Turbine throws a great party at PAX, so I'd made RSVP'ing a top priority and picked this shindig over the numerous others (including a blogger tweet-up, parties hosted by The Secret World, Curse, and Bioware, and a Jonathan Coulton concert). In a world where I had more time, I might have left the show early to nap and save some energy to hit more than one social event, but I guess I had just come to terms with the fact that attending an event as big as PAX means that you will necessarily miss some things that would have been worth going to. In any case, it appears that I chose well.
Lining up to enter the party, I noticed a familiar logo on the shirt of the guy who had walked in at the same time I did, and realized that his voice sounded familiar. Completely by accident, I had run into Chris from MMO Reporter. In addition to his role as the head of a Canadian MMO Podcast syndicate, Chris was covering the show for PC Gamer. It was interesting to hear about what he had seen (which we can all do via the podcast and upcoming videos), and he had definitely lined up way more formal interview time than I got by wandering the floor, but I was a bit surprised to hear largely the same impression I'd gotten of the show - some interesting tidbits but relatively little major news. Perhaps PAX has gotten so big these days that it's only worth paying the cost of exhibiting for the biggest titles that are gearing up their marketing pushes for launches later this year.
Chris was not the only famous podcaster in attendance. Jerry Snook - founder of DDOcast and now a member of DDO's community team - was in the house, along with longtime DDOCast PAX East correspondent Steiner-Davion and frequent guest-host Rowanheal. Meanwhile, Turbine spared no expense, booking the back room of Jillian's across the street from Fenway park, providing free drink tickets and high quality swag. (The highlight - an actual real-world cloak.) For extra amusement value, they had the TV screens that would ordinarily be showing sports in most bars in Boston playing the promos for the LOTRO and DDO expansions instead - quite an unexpected sight.
On top of all that, I ended up getting to chat with Executive Producers Fernando (DDO) and Kate (LOTRO) Paiz for the better part of ten minutes about their experiences running their games through their now famous free to play conversations. As Fernando tells it, one of the first questions the marketing people asked was how quickly they could retrofit DDO to free to play. His response was very quickly if you didn't care about the quality of the product, and fortunately a more measured response won out.
Many couples might have been nervous about working together on such a high profile, high pressure project, but Fernando claims that things very quickly got too busy for them to get in each others' way. Kate covered many of the business model systems, while Fernando worked more closely on the design and engineering side, and both had plenty of work to do. I asked whether Turbine's shared engine made it easier to repeat the process with LOTRO, and Fernando definitely agreed that having two major projects running the current engine made it easier to justify large investments in this technology. (In general, he said that LOTRO gets upgrades first, though DDO got to be the first in line during the conversion.)
Following up on this discussion, I asked Kate about the shift to the larger scale expansions in both games. She confirmed that having the highly successful expansion launch in LOTRO definitely helped make the case for undertaking the larger project in DDO. I'm still not 100% satisfied with this move, as I feel it undermines the a la carte choice of the model, but at least I can respect that they are trying more ambitious things with the larger revenue that has come under the new business model.
Winding Down
I finally headed out of the Turbine party a bit after 10 PM - perhaps a bit early by nightlife standards, but it had been a very long day and I had many sore muscles to show for it. (Ironically, Bioware may have been exceedingly clever in providing comfortable seating in a portion of the SWTOR "booth" that served as a lounge and venue for several daily panels/Q&A's. On paper it looked like a lot of underutilised space, but I wouldn't be surprised if tired convention-goers spent more time in view of the promotional videos and panels because it was a good place to rest.)
Sunday had much smaller crowds - after both Friday and Saturday sold out, there were plenty of badges to be had at the door, and I convinced my wife to tag along and demo some tabletop (yes, non-video) games. The con organizers apparently had set aside an allocation of swag bags for Sunday, so I was able to get the loot that I missed out on Saturday morning. The table top section of the convention was a real pleasant surprise - you can read reviews and buy games anywhere, but it's not every day that you can get people to teach you dozens of them just to see which ones you find interesting.
Cell phone reception at the con was sluggish, leading to delayed text message times that had Riannon and myself criss-crossing the show floor in an effort to introduce ourselves before heading out. Riannon and Pete are another duo of folks I've been hanging out with online for years, and it was great to meet them as well. That said, we were all pretty tired by this point in the con, and we all headed out our separate ways back home around lunchtime.
Overall
Far and away the best advice I got on attending the con was not to have my heart set on catching everything that was going on, as this seemed downright impossible. I know I missed any number of things due to conflicts and aversion to lines, and that was just something to come to grips with.
I saved some money through my less than optimal travel arrangements and staying with a friend in town, and I spent surprisingly little at the event itself - the Turbine swag in particular included several free items that I would have considered paying for. That said, the cost of the weekend trip still comes pretty close to the total of what I spent on MMO's last year. If not for the fact that both PAX locations happen to be in cities that my wife and I have reason to visit anyway, this trip would be very hard to justify.
That said, overall I had a good time at the con - in some ways despite the con itself. The moments that are going to stick with me are not the games or the booths, but the people. Perhaps in the same way that some of the things we do in MMO's can become fun in the right company, some of the less desirable quirks of the convention - long lines and limited information beyond what you could have read online for a fraction of the time and money - are worth overlooking.
PVD @ PAX
I've been following news at the major gaming conventions since there has been enough of a world-wide web. I still remember the days when my issue of Electronic Gaming Monthly was worth the purchase even though I'd seen the info six weeks earlier online, because dial-up bandwidth meant that downloading high quality screenshots was a nigh-prohibitive activity. This weekend, I'm finally going to actually attend one in person, thanks to a confluence of events that made it vaguely sensible to travel to Boston at the same time as PAX East.
I'm primarily going to be at the show on Saturday, with some time on Sunday depending on how my schedule shakes out (and how much stuff I feel I missed out on during the more crowded middle day of the show). I may not go to a single panel or stick around for much of anything that has a long line. If anything, I'm more interested in community events, such as Turbine's annual shindig, the MMO tweet-up, and Ferrel's book signing for the The Raider's Companion. If, incidentally to these activities, I happen to pick up swag from some major titles or details of some minor ones I haven't heard of, that will be a bonus.
That said, if anyone reading this has an event they would like to promote/recommend - either your own product or something that you've heard of elsewhere - feel free to leave a comment. There's a lot of stuff on the map of the floor, and I can't promise I'll get to everything, but I won't complain about a suggestion or two.
P.S. My only regret concerning my travel schedule is not being present for any creative protests at the Mass Effect 3 panel. I have no desire to attend said panel for its own sake, but I can only imagine what creative mayhem players may inflict on the developers, who probably had no idea what they were in for when they booked the timeslot.
I'm primarily going to be at the show on Saturday, with some time on Sunday depending on how my schedule shakes out (and how much stuff I feel I missed out on during the more crowded middle day of the show). I may not go to a single panel or stick around for much of anything that has a long line. If anything, I'm more interested in community events, such as Turbine's annual shindig, the MMO tweet-up, and Ferrel's book signing for the The Raider's Companion. If, incidentally to these activities, I happen to pick up swag from some major titles or details of some minor ones I haven't heard of, that will be a bonus.
That said, if anyone reading this has an event they would like to promote/recommend - either your own product or something that you've heard of elsewhere - feel free to leave a comment. There's a lot of stuff on the map of the floor, and I can't promise I'll get to everything, but I won't complain about a suggestion or two.
P.S. My only regret concerning my travel schedule is not being present for any creative protests at the Mass Effect 3 panel. I have no desire to attend said panel for its own sake, but I can only imagine what creative mayhem players may inflict on the developers, who probably had no idea what they were in for when they booked the timeslot.
First Time MMO PC Builder, Part 4 (Continue Testing)
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| Meet GArMOS-1 (short for Green AR-madillo Made, with added Portal reference) |
So far, everything I have attempted to run has run, despite the older graphics card. Given what I'm hearing about specs for the next generation of GPU's, I'm definitely expecting to get better value in a few months. In the mean time, the only settings I have had to downgrade are things like max quality shadows or anti-aliasing. I guess I sort of notice these, but I don't consider these performance issues so much as cosmetics. While modern MMO's are delivering maximum settings that require some serious computing power, developers aren't abandoning the mainstream (and my machine is a bit above mainstream even with the out-dated GPU).
Several people during the process commented that my tales of troubleshooting prove that I should have just paid someone to build a machine for me - in particular, the Canadians apparently have a chain that is well known for this sort of thing. I'd say a few things to this:
- Paying someone else to build the machine - and provide a warranty - may be more costly than you realize. Doghouse Systems (official sponsor of numerous MMO podcasts) charges $1750 for a machine that's roughly comparable to what mine will be when I upgrade the graphics card, only mine cost under $1200. Maybe your local shop manages to be cheaper without compromising on reputation, but they have to pay the employees who will provide your warranty service somehow, along with shipping, any expenses for parts, etc.
- As those of you who have read my posts about F2P business models know, I'm someone who derives some degree of satisfaction out of pursuing and obtaining a good deal. Technically speaking, it may be correct that my time is worth more than the money I save on this exercise, but that's part of the fun for me. I could definitely see how someone with a different personality would find this less enjoyable.
- In the longer term, I value the knowledge I've taken away from this project. Because I assembled this machine, I don't have to shrug when something stops working. That knowledge - especially since this is unlikely to be the last computer I ever assemble, has some value in the long run.
Ever Test An Indie MMO?
Eric at Elder Game has opened up signups to test his one-man indie MMO, Project Gorgon. I don't have the time to justify taking a slot among his testing ranks, but it's definitely an interesting project. It's fascinating for me as someone who analyzes game design to see the choices that a real live developer makes on allocating development resources - choices that are easier to comprehend because of the scale (one developer, as compared to the $100 million AAA MMO studio).
If you have the time, and you find what he's written on the project interesting, I recommend the project. It sounds like fun, and you might learn a thing or two.
If you have the time, and you find what he's written on the project interesting, I recommend the project. It sounds like fun, and you might learn a thing or two.
If you can't say something nice?
There are a few things I could blog about today. I'm strangely not excited about writing any of them. I suppose when you've been at this for long enough, there are relatively fewer things that you can write that you haven't written in the past and/or don't expect to be covering repeatedly as the news in question gets closer to the present?
On the plus side, I suppose the upshot to having a blog that's nearly four years old is that it gets easier to just shrug, /punt, and go hit the raidfinder or something.
On the plus side, I suppose the upshot to having a blog that's nearly four years old is that it gets easier to just shrug, /punt, and go hit the raidfinder or something.
First Time MMO PC Builder, Part 3 (Finalizing, Testing, Troubleshooting)
When I left off last week, I had assembled the core components of my new gaming machine, with a few details to work out, a few additional components to add, and a few spare parts to obtain. Most of all, I had some general cleanup work ahead of me to ensure that cables were routed properly and the system was in good working order. I also had some testing and, unfortunately, a bit of troubleshooting.
Finishing Touches
Testing and Overclocking
Now it was time for stress testing and basic overclocking. PC builders seem to have universally rallied around a program called Prime95 to test whether machines will crash when pushed to do hard computations for extended periods of time. After surviving an initial round of testing, I went into the ASUS bios and enabled their pre-configured automatic overclocking feature.
With little more than a single click of a button, this ramped the stock speed on my CPU from 3.3 GHz up to 4.2 GHz, and an extended round of stress testing indicated no problems. A real overclocker would push the envelope further, but this spot on the effort-reward curve is good enough for me, at least for the moment. The GPU, whatever I end up with, is already going to be the bottleneck for this system, and there's no reason increase power consumption, wear and tear, etc to go beyond that until/unless I need to.
From here, it was on to testing all the clients I copied over from my laptop. Here, the results were universally positive. I'm not able to max out all of the Anti-Aliasing and Shadow settings, but I can have max draw distance and texture quality, which are the two settings I care the most about. I can sort of notice the improvement in quality when you start throwing in the fancier effects, but it's not worth gutting frame rates. I'm able to run WoW, EQ2, LOTRO, DDO, DCUO, Runes of Magic and Rift on the new machine at my primary monitor's 1920x1080 native resolution, while leaving a second monitor (an old 1280x1024 monitor) up with a web browser and other utilities.
Overall, the project is starting to look like a win, though it will definitely be interesting to see how SWTOR, with its higher requirements, runs.
Troubleshooting
Unfortunately, the fan controller turned around to give me my first troubleshooting experience with the machine. I selected a Lamptron FC4 because it sounded functional and matched my aesthetics - no fancy LCD screens, and it was black with blue LED's, matching the case fans - and because it seemed priced reasonably at $30. I was otherwise going to be out probably $15-20 for molex adapters for my four case fans, so this seemed like a small additional expense to add some additional functionality.
Reviews on Newegg were mixed - many on Newegg commented that the build quality looked a bit inconsistent - but I figured that this was the issue you always have with any sort of online review - the one person who got a dead unit has a stronger incentive to complain than the dozen who didn't. Once the device arrived, though, I saw a bit of what they meant. The metal brace used to mount the device in the 5.25" bay is unnecessarily short - just barely long enough to even reach the first screws - and it took a lot of repositioning to get the thing in correctly.
Then, about half a week in to the life of the machine, I noticed that one of the LCD's on the front panel was no longer fully lit. After a quick check, I determined that the connected fan was also no longer running. My first guess was that maybe I did something wrong while installing it, so I removed both side panels and the front cover so I could unplug and replug the offending fan. No luck. Then I swapped the fan with one of the others, and it was immediately obvious that one of the four fan channels was no longer working properly, as the previously non-working fan fired up and the previously working fan sat, inactive. (The big advantage to seemingly cosmetic LED's on fans is you can immediately tell when one isn't running.)
Eventually, I discovered that pressing the knob down reasonably hard (not something that you'd otherwise have reason to do) caused the fan connected to it to fire back up, only to stop again the moment the knob is released. I'm not sure if something is bent or so poorly connected that it stopped functioning after days, but I'm concerned about trusting this device with the operation of my fans if it's this shoddy. It's possible that a pair of pliers may be able to fix the problem, but I'm not sure if I want to risk doing something that could affect my ability to return the thing if it's really that poorly made.
Meanwhile, I didn't spend money on a backup solution to the problem of how to hook up the fans, so I would need to partially dismantle the machine and leave it out of commission until a replacement arrives. Given that I cannibalized my old desktop for parts to set this thing up, this is a bit inconvenient. Ah well, a relatively minor first issue as far as DIY computers go, and at least I know enough to know how to identify the problem, rather than having to go to a shop with no clue what it's not working.
Final thoughts to follow once I figure out how to deal with the fan controller issue and have a bit more time to test the machine in action.
Finishing Touches
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| The hard drives take up relatively little space in the very bottom of the case, after re-arranging some cables. |
- The first thing I did with my new shipment of parts was to swap out the right-angled SATA cables with straight ones. I had to remove the lower front fan from in front of the hard drive bay so I could put the two drives back in the configuration that I wanted them in, but the advantage was clear - absolutely no obstruction to the two intake fans.
- Next, it was time to install the fan controller. More on this story in a minute.
- I installed two cards, which I appropriated from my old desktop - a wireless network adapter PCI card and an nVidia 9600 GSO graphics card. The latter is definitely a place-holder - I had to check the benchmarks to verify that this card is actually superior to the Intel HD 3000 integrated graphics on my CPU - but I decided to go with this approach for two reasons. First, I'd like to see how the machine runs with the current hardware, so I can tell how much additional firepower I need. Second, Nvidia's new chips are expected shortly, and I see no reason to rush into a purchase when there will likely be new models or bargains on old ones in the near future.
- Now it was time to start routing cables. Because my build is relatively minimalist, it only took me a dozen cable ties or so to get everything secured to my liking.
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| The finished interior of the machine. |
Now it was time for stress testing and basic overclocking. PC builders seem to have universally rallied around a program called Prime95 to test whether machines will crash when pushed to do hard computations for extended periods of time. After surviving an initial round of testing, I went into the ASUS bios and enabled their pre-configured automatic overclocking feature.
With little more than a single click of a button, this ramped the stock speed on my CPU from 3.3 GHz up to 4.2 GHz, and an extended round of stress testing indicated no problems. A real overclocker would push the envelope further, but this spot on the effort-reward curve is good enough for me, at least for the moment. The GPU, whatever I end up with, is already going to be the bottleneck for this system, and there's no reason increase power consumption, wear and tear, etc to go beyond that until/unless I need to.
From here, it was on to testing all the clients I copied over from my laptop. Here, the results were universally positive. I'm not able to max out all of the Anti-Aliasing and Shadow settings, but I can have max draw distance and texture quality, which are the two settings I care the most about. I can sort of notice the improvement in quality when you start throwing in the fancier effects, but it's not worth gutting frame rates. I'm able to run WoW, EQ2, LOTRO, DDO, DCUO, Runes of Magic and Rift on the new machine at my primary monitor's 1920x1080 native resolution, while leaving a second monitor (an old 1280x1024 monitor) up with a web browser and other utilities.
Overall, the project is starting to look like a win, though it will definitely be interesting to see how SWTOR, with its higher requirements, runs.
Troubleshooting
Unfortunately, the fan controller turned around to give me my first troubleshooting experience with the machine. I selected a Lamptron FC4 because it sounded functional and matched my aesthetics - no fancy LCD screens, and it was black with blue LED's, matching the case fans - and because it seemed priced reasonably at $30. I was otherwise going to be out probably $15-20 for molex adapters for my four case fans, so this seemed like a small additional expense to add some additional functionality.
Reviews on Newegg were mixed - many on Newegg commented that the build quality looked a bit inconsistent - but I figured that this was the issue you always have with any sort of online review - the one person who got a dead unit has a stronger incentive to complain than the dozen who didn't. Once the device arrived, though, I saw a bit of what they meant. The metal brace used to mount the device in the 5.25" bay is unnecessarily short - just barely long enough to even reach the first screws - and it took a lot of repositioning to get the thing in correctly.
Then, about half a week in to the life of the machine, I noticed that one of the LCD's on the front panel was no longer fully lit. After a quick check, I determined that the connected fan was also no longer running. My first guess was that maybe I did something wrong while installing it, so I removed both side panels and the front cover so I could unplug and replug the offending fan. No luck. Then I swapped the fan with one of the others, and it was immediately obvious that one of the four fan channels was no longer working properly, as the previously non-working fan fired up and the previously working fan sat, inactive. (The big advantage to seemingly cosmetic LED's on fans is you can immediately tell when one isn't running.)
Eventually, I discovered that pressing the knob down reasonably hard (not something that you'd otherwise have reason to do) caused the fan connected to it to fire back up, only to stop again the moment the knob is released. I'm not sure if something is bent or so poorly connected that it stopped functioning after days, but I'm concerned about trusting this device with the operation of my fans if it's this shoddy. It's possible that a pair of pliers may be able to fix the problem, but I'm not sure if I want to risk doing something that could affect my ability to return the thing if it's really that poorly made.
Meanwhile, I didn't spend money on a backup solution to the problem of how to hook up the fans, so I would need to partially dismantle the machine and leave it out of commission until a replacement arrives. Given that I cannibalized my old desktop for parts to set this thing up, this is a bit inconvenient. Ah well, a relatively minor first issue as far as DIY computers go, and at least I know enough to know how to identify the problem, rather than having to go to a shop with no clue what it's not working.
Final thoughts to follow once I figure out how to deal with the fan controller issue and have a bit more time to test the machine in action.
First Time MMO PC Builder, Part 2 (Initial Build)
Last weekend I sat down in a room with a box of parts - carefully selected after much deliberation - and embarked to turn them into a computer. Two key lessons right off the bat:
Cables Everywhere
The first thing I did was open up the boxes to find and read (yes, read) manuals, examine cables and connectors, etc. I was struck by how many cables there were. My case alone came with 4 fans, each of which has a three pin power connector and a speed adjustment switch. Throw in motherboard hookups for the front-of-case USB and audio plugins and you're talking 10 loose wires in the empty case before I even started putting anything in there.
I can immediately see why so many people talk about "cable management" as a major part of building. My case comes with a little nook, a bit under two inches wide and maybe half of the case's height, where apparently I can literally stuff the tentacle-like mass of excess cables writing out of the end of my power supply. Speaking of which, I immediately had an unfortunate surprise in that the power supply had to be installed fan-side up because there is no venting in the floor of my case. It would have been easier to stash the surplus cables if it had been the other way around.
In my shopping list post, Xaxziminrax II suggested that power supply manufacturers add excessive cables so they can then charge us to not include so many in more expensive "modular" units. On one hand, I can see how it could be cheaper to have one model that everyone can live with, rather than separate models for people who actually want eight hard drives (the number of SATA power plugs on my power supply) and no PCIE plugs for graphics because they're running a server with intergrated or no graphics, versus people who want one hard drive and multiple GPU's. That said, my power supply may have been excessive - the two universally required connectors for the mother board are joined by two for graphics cards, eight all-purpose four-pin MOLEX connections, the eight SATA connectors, and a pair of floppy disk connections - yes, not one but TWO of something I haven't seen on a computer in a decade - for good measure.
Ironically, all these cables and I still didn't necessarily have as many as I needed or the right shapes and sizes.
I showed my wife my progress at several stages along the way, and she remarked that in some ways it was like a very fancy Lego set. This is an exaggeration, but assembling a computer is nowhere near as complicated as I expected. The only tool I needed was a screwdriver. When you deduct all the time I spent looking up answers to questions like "can you plug a three pin fan connector into a four pin plug on the motherboard?" (answer: yes, the fourth pin is optional, and there's a plastic tab to force you to pick the correct three pins), the process was also remarkably fast.
I double checked all of the connections, hooked up an old monitor, double checked again, plugged the thing in and pushed the power button. Never before has the absurd "no keyboard detected, press F1 on non-existent keyboard to enter setup" message been so welcome - if the fact that I hadn't plugged in the keyboard yet was the biggest problem (and the machine was well enough to recognize this), I was in good shape.
Ironically, I got further than I'd originally hoped. The machine accepted my wireless keyboard/mouse and the external DVD drive without any issues, and was easily set to prioritize the DVD drive over the empty hard drive. I was then able to go on and install windows onto the SSD without issues - and let me note that the machine boots nice and quick off of the SSD. I hit a minor snag because Windows didn't have a driver for the ethernet port on the motherboard, but fortunately the DVD that came with the motherboard did, and I was then able to go online for my antivirus and Windows Update needs.
There are a number of tasks left for next weekend. I will need to install a graphics card, a wireless network card (the finished machine won't be sitting on the desk with the router), move and install the secondary hard drive, install the fan controller I ordered and connect all the fans. Then will come the more involved tasks of actually securing all the cables in a way that does not leave loose cables to block airflow or get caught in moving parts. After that comes stress testing and overclocking (nothing too agressive, but on paper I should be able to bump the stock CPU speed by several hundred MHz based on the hardware I have).
More on this project - and eventually the fun part of actually taking it for a spin in games - next week.
- The internet is your friend. I had a ton of questions that I was able to answer through guides - this step by step guide on Tom's forums was a key reference - and asking Google questions. I don't know that I could have pulled this all off without that knowledge available (on a computer that wasn't lying in pieces on the desk).
- Allow time. My goal was to install the bare minimum parts needed to see if the ones I had installed were working correctly. This still took me most of the weekend. More to the point, as a first timer there were definitely some things I ended up ordering, and it was just lower stress to know that finishing the project up this weekend was part of the plan.
Cables Everywhere
The first thing I did was open up the boxes to find and read (yes, read) manuals, examine cables and connectors, etc. I was struck by how many cables there were. My case alone came with 4 fans, each of which has a three pin power connector and a speed adjustment switch. Throw in motherboard hookups for the front-of-case USB and audio plugins and you're talking 10 loose wires in the empty case before I even started putting anything in there.
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| Some of the surplus cables that I have no planned use for, along with two of the fan hookups, stick out the side of the case as I wrap up for the night. Many of these will have to live in the cable management compartment, above. |
In my shopping list post, Xaxziminrax II suggested that power supply manufacturers add excessive cables so they can then charge us to not include so many in more expensive "modular" units. On one hand, I can see how it could be cheaper to have one model that everyone can live with, rather than separate models for people who actually want eight hard drives (the number of SATA power plugs on my power supply) and no PCIE plugs for graphics because they're running a server with intergrated or no graphics, versus people who want one hard drive and multiple GPU's. That said, my power supply may have been excessive - the two universally required connectors for the mother board are joined by two for graphics cards, eight all-purpose four-pin MOLEX connections, the eight SATA connectors, and a pair of floppy disk connections - yes, not one but TWO of something I haven't seen on a computer in a decade - for good measure.
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| The swarm of cables threaten to overrun the hard drives. |
- The fans came with three pin connectors designed to be connected to motherboards, but A) the motherboard only has two chassis fan connectors compared to the four fans in my case and B) this means allowing the motherboard to determine whether and when to run the fans, and I had some trouble figuring out how to get it to do that properly. A cheap solution to this problem is to buy some adapter plugs to convert the three pin inputs to the molex connectors that I have so many of. A slightly more expensive but functional solution, which I opted for, involved ordering a fan controller (which will allow me to adjust the fan speeds from outside the case, because I'm definitely not opening the side to get at the controls on the fans).
- The motherboard came with a pair of SATA cables for connecting hard drives to the motherboard. I have a pair of hard drives, so this should have been good, except for a minor problem; the cables have right angle connectors (you can see one, with the white tip on the black cable, pictured above). The case has a floor mounting for an SSD, which would allow me to leave two of the three slots behind the lower case fan un-obstructed by hard drives. This is also a cheap fix (under $4, shipped), but one I didn't think ahead to order.
- As long as I'm ordering cheap cable-related items, I also snagged a sack of cable ties. I got about 10 of these with various components, but I expect to use a lot more than that in the process of securing all of the fan cables. On the plus side, this only cost $5, and I needed some cable ties to deal with my poorly organized home theater setup in any case.
I showed my wife my progress at several stages along the way, and she remarked that in some ways it was like a very fancy Lego set. This is an exaggeration, but assembling a computer is nowhere near as complicated as I expected. The only tool I needed was a screwdriver. When you deduct all the time I spent looking up answers to questions like "can you plug a three pin fan connector into a four pin plug on the motherboard?" (answer: yes, the fourth pin is optional, and there's a plastic tab to force you to pick the correct three pins), the process was also remarkably fast.
- Install power supply. This could go later, but the power supply is heavy enough that I'd rather lock it into place early. I'd be even more nervous about waiting if my case had a top-mounting, because then I'd be juggling a large heavy object over an assembled motherboard. Also, for people working in primarily plastic cases, this may be helpful in reducing the risk of static shock by adding a metal object - my case is almost all metal, so I was probably pretty safe even before strapping on the wristband.
- Place hard drives in bays. Ironically, I ended up undoing this work when I figured out that the cables weren't going to work the way I had it set up, and I'll need to re-do it again this weekend to get it back the way I wanted it.
- Get out the motherboard, screw in "stand-offs" to the case for future installation, install input/output bay shield (more on this in a few steps).
- Install CPU on motherboard. This was the step that scared me the most, because it's theoretically possible to damage the components. That said, it's apparently gotten a lot easier. My CPU did not have pins on the bottom, instead a mostly flat surface that sits in the flat compartment with tabs that physically prevent you from doing it wrong. All you have to do is remove the cap, set the chip down, and pull the lever that used to hold the cap back into place to secure the chip.
- Install CPU cooler. My cooler selection was common enough that I was fortunate to have pictures on the forums. This was helpful, because the instructions aren't that clear if you don't already know what you're doing. There's also a step where you need to apply thermal paste - hopefully the amount I added was correct, but I'm not opening it up to mess with it unless I encounter problems down the line.
Note how close the CPU cooler sits to the top RAM slot. Fortunately, my motherboard did not require that slot if you are only using two DIMM's, and I should not need to upgrade to 4 anytime soon since I started with 8 GB of RAM. I could see why people suggest installing the RAM first if their situation was different, and it's possible that I would need to replace the CPU cooler with something smaller if I do want to try this in the future. - Install RAM. This is easy enough, chips are notched so that they can't be installed backwards. The only thing that's surprising about this process is that it actually does take some amount of force - not excessive but it definitely don't just slip in like a USB plug or anything.
- Now that the motherboard is loaded with the things that do not have cables attached to them, mount it on the standoff's. Here's where I had a bit of a struggle with the input/output plug shield. This thin piece of metal is apparently used to make sure the jacks on the back of the machine are touching a piece of metal that is touching the metal case, to ensure that any static charge that happens to be on my USB plug doesn't end up on the motherboard. The catch is that some need to be bent out of the way to avoid blocking ports, while some need to be NON-BENT to avoid blocking the installation process. This part actually took me a non-trivial amount of time.
Here is the exterior of the I/O shield, you can kind of see the little metal tabs going into the case. - Start connecting cables! The motherboard gets two inputs from the power supply. The hard drives get one power cable and one data cable to the motherboard. The case-front USB, audio, and even the power button/light all have their own spots on the motherboard (the manual: it is your friend). Fans have spots. And so-on.
I double checked all of the connections, hooked up an old monitor, double checked again, plugged the thing in and pushed the power button. Never before has the absurd "no keyboard detected, press F1 on non-existent keyboard to enter setup" message been so welcome - if the fact that I hadn't plugged in the keyboard yet was the biggest problem (and the machine was well enough to recognize this), I was in good shape.
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| The guts so far. |
There are a number of tasks left for next weekend. I will need to install a graphics card, a wireless network card (the finished machine won't be sitting on the desk with the router), move and install the secondary hard drive, install the fan controller I ordered and connect all the fans. Then will come the more involved tasks of actually securing all the cables in a way that does not leave loose cables to block airflow or get caught in moving parts. After that comes stress testing and overclocking (nothing too agressive, but on paper I should be able to bump the stock CPU speed by several hundred MHz based on the hardware I have).
More on this project - and eventually the fun part of actually taking it for a spin in games - next week.
First Time MMO PC Builder, Part 1 (Shopping)
I often lay out New Year's resolutions that either get done immediately or not at all, and this year's plan to build my first computer ended up in the immediate camp. My dissatisfaction with my current laptop, coupled with current prices was enough to push me off the fence early - there's always something over the horizon or some future discount you can snag, and I've definitely stuck it out too long on previous machines because I wanted to wait for just one more thing to come out.
The Past and the Plan
I'm never built a computer from parts before, but I've done various sub-portions of this task - installing RAM, graphics cards, wireless cards, and hard drives, re-partitioning and installing Ubuntu on an old laptop that is now reborn as a websurfing machine, etc. Basically, what I hadn't done before was pick out my own components and assemble a machine.
I'm hoping to get 3 years out of this machine as my primary gaming platform and then have it retire to work as a media server or whatnot. My approximate budget was $800 for hardware not including the graphics card - I have an old card I plan to use until I see whether this whole endeavor catches fire and sinks into the swamp, and I knew going in that this was something easy for me to swap out later. Either I will buy a long-term solution or a medium term one that I plan to replace (and possibly carry over into the computer after this one). This is a machine I plan to live with and upgrade, so I'm not as concerned with minimizing expenses on everything that doesn't directly inflate my benchmarks, especially for stuff that would make my life more difficult as a first-time builder. I decided early on not to mess with any design with either dual graphic cards or water cooling for this reason.
I also made a deliberate decision to break the project up into two weekends. I was certain that there would be something I would need to order, that I would run out of time, etc etc. My goal for week 1 was to install the bare minimum parts I need to confirm that things are working, leaving add-ons, final cable-routing, and actual setup to a second weekend.
The Parts
As with system builder custom, I will break out separately mail-in rebate values, since these are intentionally designed to be difficult and time-consuming to actually collect.
There are a few miscellaneous cable purchases yet to be added to the total, so realistically I'm slightly over where I was aiming, primarily because I jumped on an SSD deal that was a bit of a reach for my budget.
Overall, so far I am happy with all of my choices, though some gave me headaches during installation (tomorrow's topic, this one is already long). I will say that I was definitely struck by how difficult it is to get all the answers about what types of plugs your components have/need, etc. I've also probably made a number of mistakes that some of you may be laughing at me for as you read this.
Even so, I'm glad I embarked on this project. I definitely feel like I know more about computers in general and what makes mine in particular tick. Maybe knowing exactly how to reinstall and even replace components at will can eventually save me some money. All that aside, it was actually kind of fun. If the end result is a solid mid-end computer - which, incidentally, will be far more than I would have gotten for the money through any other approach, I'll be happy.
The Past and the Plan
I'm never built a computer from parts before, but I've done various sub-portions of this task - installing RAM, graphics cards, wireless cards, and hard drives, re-partitioning and installing Ubuntu on an old laptop that is now reborn as a websurfing machine, etc. Basically, what I hadn't done before was pick out my own components and assemble a machine.
I'm hoping to get 3 years out of this machine as my primary gaming platform and then have it retire to work as a media server or whatnot. My approximate budget was $800 for hardware not including the graphics card - I have an old card I plan to use until I see whether this whole endeavor catches fire and sinks into the swamp, and I knew going in that this was something easy for me to swap out later. Either I will buy a long-term solution or a medium term one that I plan to replace (and possibly carry over into the computer after this one). This is a machine I plan to live with and upgrade, so I'm not as concerned with minimizing expenses on everything that doesn't directly inflate my benchmarks, especially for stuff that would make my life more difficult as a first-time builder. I decided early on not to mess with any design with either dual graphic cards or water cooling for this reason.
I also made a deliberate decision to break the project up into two weekends. I was certain that there would be something I would need to order, that I would run out of time, etc etc. My goal for week 1 was to install the bare minimum parts I need to confirm that things are working, leaving add-ons, final cable-routing, and actual setup to a second weekend.
The Parts
As with system builder custom, I will break out separately mail-in rebate values, since these are intentionally designed to be difficult and time-consuming to actually collect.
- CPU: Intel "Sandy Bridge" Core i5 2500K - $220
Based on reviews and benchmarks, this appears to be the sweet-spot on price performance. It's a solid chip that can overclock well, if I get that far. The guys at Tom's tried to put the comparable priced AMD chip in their $1200 build last month and came out much worse off, despite a major investment in graphics. - Motherboard: Intel Z68-based ASUS P8Z68-V LX: $125 ($10 mail in)
The Z68 chipset supports the integrated graphics capabilities of the Sandy Bridge processors. This can theoretically save power (no need to fire up a graphics card for basic Windows functions), provides extra monitor slots if I try to install more monitors than my graphics card has outputs, and also means that I have a backup option for troubleshooting in the event of a malfunctioning graphics card (which happened to me on my last machine).
It was actually remarkably difficult to get a comparison of what the differences in the various P8Z68 models - the board's fan club has a comparison chart. The -V boards effectively do not have a second graphic card slot - which fit with my plan in any case - but you quickly get down into the weeds on all kinds of numbers like USB 3.0 slots etc, which snowball around to hit whether or not your case actually has extra USB 3.0 plugs to plug those into, etc etc. In the end, I made a judgement call that this board fit my budget and was good enough for my needs. - SSD (system+program drive): Corsair Force GT 120 GB: $179.99 ($30 mail in)
This relatively splurge immediately pushed me to the high end of the budget. Pretty much everyone agrees that an SSD system drive is a great upgrade. In this approach, you spend about $80 on a 60 GB drive that will take Windows, basic programs, and maybe one MMO (though WoW's 28 GB may be pushing this).
As someone who plays a bunch of different MMO's, I really wanted to have room to share the SSD love with more than the one game, but I couldn't justify the cost. Then this drive went on sale for $150 with the rebate. Even then it's still a bit more of my budget than I technically "should" be spending on storage, but this buys me the space to have my top 3-5 games of the moment on the SSD. - Data Drive: 500 GB Western Digital Caviar Blue - $80
Gamers tend to covet the Caviar Black model, which has gotten very costly in the wake of flooding in Thailand. Still, I didn't view going without a data drive as an option; even with the larger SSD, there are still going to be 100 GB of game clients I use once a month that are going to have to go somewhere. This was a price that I could afford, and it's still very good from a performance standpoint.
- RAM: 8 GB (2x4GB) Corsair XMS 3 DDR3 1600 - $48 ($10 mail in)
Lots of people just go with the cheapest 4 GB DDR3 1600 kit they can find and call it a day, and I was initially inclined to go along with this. The upgrade to 8 GB turned out to be under $20. I like being able to run in windowed mode with a browser sometimes, this upgrade was cheap, and reportedly sometimes an improvement.
- Power Supply: Corsair TX-650 V2: $90 ($20 mail in)
The power supply is one of those components that system builder challenges tend to skimp on, while experienced builders caution that this is a highly important part that can fail catastrophically and greatly affect performance in the mean while. Throw in a touch of uncertainty about how much power my as-yet-unselected final graphics card would require and I was stuck on this one for a while. Then a well-reviewed model with enough juice to fill my needs went on sale. One thing you don't get in this price range is "modular" cables - it's apparently cheaper for them to build one model that leaves dozens of excess cables hanging out in the case than to make the cables fully detachable. - Optical Drive: External HP 24x DVD burner 1270e - $30
This is an unconventional choice - most people go with an internal drive that transfers data through a faster SATA port on the motherboard, rather than a slower USB port. This difference for me is that I don't get my software on souvenir coasters anymore - my current laptop doesn't have an optical drive and I've done fine without for almost a year and a half. I also don't use the computer for watching DVD's when I could be watching them on the TV instead.
Bottom line, I need this drive only when I go to re-install windows, or perhaps an MMO recent enough for the client disks to still be worth using (e.g. SWTOR if I get it in the near future). In exchange for a slight drop in speed, I have one fewer thing to install internally, and, more importantly, I have a drive that can be shared amongst the present (and possibly future) computers in the Armadillo household that do not have working optical drives (my Alienware, my wife's Macbook Air, my old Dell desktop whose drive broke several years ago) for the price of one internal drive. Your mileage may vary but this was an easy choice for me. - Case: Antec Three Hundred Illusion - $70
This choice baffled me for a disproportionate amount of time precisely because it is relatively hard to measure objectively. You can get a case for $30-50, but it's likely to be hard to work with and require additional purchases. You can get a case for $150, but that really doesn't make sense in the budget range I was aiming at. In the middle are compromises, but it's hard to tell which of these compromises really matter. There's also so much personal preference involved that every case has someone who swears it was a pleasure to work with and someone who hated it.
In the end, I decided to go by popularity. I liked the look of this case, and I liked what I read about it in the September edition of Tom's $2000 build. Unlike the entry level version of the Antec Three Hundred, the Illusion comes with a pair of intake fans. I actually had to go back and make a slight switch to my planned motherboard at this stage - I'd been planning on paying slightly more for the P8Z68-V LE, which has headers to support two front USB 3.0 ports, but this case only had USB 2.0 ports. It's actually remarkably hard to get an answer to a seemingly simple question like "does your case have USB 3.0 ports", but it seems like the answer in this price range is generally "no".
- CPU Cooler: Cooler Master Hyper 212 Plus: $29
I chose this based on overwhelming popularity, and the fact that it was paired with the case I finally selected in the linked build at Tom's. - Anti Static Wrist Band: $5
Waste of money? Perhaps. Do I look silly clipping my wrist to the metal case? Perhaps. If this is snake oil, at least it's a bit of snake oil that only cost me $5 and that I can reuse for all my future computer building/modification needs. - Monitor, Keyboard, Mouse, Wireless network card, and Starter Graphics Card: Hand me down's from past systems ($0)
There are a few miscellaneous cable purchases yet to be added to the total, so realistically I'm slightly over where I was aiming, primarily because I jumped on an SSD deal that was a bit of a reach for my budget.
Overall, so far I am happy with all of my choices, though some gave me headaches during installation (tomorrow's topic, this one is already long). I will say that I was definitely struck by how difficult it is to get all the answers about what types of plugs your components have/need, etc. I've also probably made a number of mistakes that some of you may be laughing at me for as you read this.
Even so, I'm glad I embarked on this project. I definitely feel like I know more about computers in general and what makes mine in particular tick. Maybe knowing exactly how to reinstall and even replace components at will can eventually save me some money. All that aside, it was actually kind of fun. If the end result is a solid mid-end computer - which, incidentally, will be far more than I would have gotten for the money through any other approach, I'll be happy.
My oddly famous blogroll widget
My evenings have been strangely packed so far this year - in part a consequence of having been out of town for a week over the holidays and therefore having a bunch of deferred errands to run. As a result, the blog has been relatively lacking in content, so I suppose it was inevitable that the most interesting part of PVD this week has been... the "most recent post" sorting feature on my blogroll widget.
First, Psychochild's year-end wrap-up named me as the number three traffic source to his site. It didn't occur to me that I personally represent a significant portion of this traffic, because I often use my blogroll as an improvised RSS reader, until Indy commented that he also uses my blogroll for the same purpose.
Then Wilhelm started playing with post tags on his archives, and my blogroll apparently concluded that his blog had last updated in 2006.
If anyone else is working on a post about my blogroll widget to add to the coincidental January 5th publicity blitz, I suppose there are a few more hours left in the day? (Actual content incoming, really.)
First, Psychochild's year-end wrap-up named me as the number three traffic source to his site. It didn't occur to me that I personally represent a significant portion of this traffic, because I often use my blogroll as an improvised RSS reader, until Indy commented that he also uses my blogroll for the same purpose.
Then Wilhelm started playing with post tags on his archives, and my blogroll apparently concluded that his blog had last updated in 2006.
If anyone else is working on a post about my blogroll widget to add to the coincidental January 5th publicity blitz, I suppose there are a few more hours left in the day? (Actual content incoming, really.)
PVD On The Multiverse Again
I was fortunate enough to get to record an episode of The Multiverse, one of my favorite podcasts. Topics of discussion included:
A few random tidbits about being a blogger who makes the occasional guest appearance on a recorded-live audio podcast:
- Blizzard's controversial expansion plan and whether Cataclysm can hold the subscribers long enough for Blizzard's slow expansion cycle.
- FFXIV getting ready for the big day when they actually start making money.
- The latest MMO's going F2P.
- Round table discussion of the future of the subscription model.
A few random tidbits about being a blogger who makes the occasional guest appearance on a recorded-live audio podcast:
- Chris of Game By Night is a teacher by day, and some of the questions he asked last time out fit that mold. We spent 15 minutes exploring topics raised by the games we were playing that week, and I fielded questions like, "So, Green, tell us about what you do at PVD. This is your time to showcase your work for our listeners who aren't so familiar with it."
Chris wasn't able to make it this time, which left Ferrel, author of the Raider's Compendium, calling the shots. The games we were playing this week segment took 75 seconds combined between the three of us, and I got thrown questions like "Green, what do you think of the FFXIV free to play conversion?" I don't actually play FFXIV, but I made this work and we chain pulled the next topic. Draw your own conclusions.
- I'm used to writing out all my thoughts and then reorganizing or deleting as necessary. By virtue of having a live conversation, there's no opportunity to reorganize, clarify, or insert that extra thought you had a few minutes later when the conversation has already moved on. As a result, it's really hard for me to have an honest opinion of how I did on the show - when I listen to it right now, I'm highly critical of what I could have said more concisely (I think I did terribly on this front this time out), or the arguments that I'm not as convinced were worth presenting at all after hearing the guys' comments.
Maybe in a year when the memory of actually having the conversation is less fresh, I'll have a different view - I definitely thought the show from last year was much better than I remembered it when I re-listened it to prepare for this week. - I did talk for what feels like 10 minutes straight about DCUO. This wasn't necessarily out of line since DCUO was one of the three news stories of the week and I was the only one who had actually played it. I also talked for probably a bit more than the other guys (Dr. Klassi was pretty quiet) during the discussion. Again, it was my suggested topic, and I don't know what exactly the right balance is. Ah well, practice makes perfect I suppose.
PSA: Disable Blogspot Favicons (PVD re-declared safe)
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| Check the "icon" box now to add a security vulnerability to your blog, so that your readers can be hit with malware any time any site that you have linked to gets hacked. Or do not do this. Blogger opts not to advise you one way or the other. |
If you host your blog on Blogger/blogspot and use the default blogroll widget, I strongly advise you to disable the "favicon" display (pictured above). Users of other platforms are similarly advised to make sure your sites are not displaying blogroll icons.
Yesterday, the popular LOTRO podcast/news site Casual Stroll to Mordor was hacked and redirected to some sort of Russian malware site - see Google safebrowsing for more details. This attack pushed out a malware-tainted "favicon" - that's the little icon you see next to the links in many blogrolls, including the one that runs by default on Blogger/Blogspot - hosted on their site. As a result, people who visited at least five Blogspot blogs, including Player Versus Developer, may have been exposed to malware.
According to CSTM's backup blog (ironically on Blogspot), the attack was discovered around 9 PM Eastern Wednesday (12 Oct), and they redirected their RSS feed sometime between then and the post (8:30 AM Eastern Thursday, 13 Oct). Out of an abundance of caution, I'd advise that anyone who visited PVD (via the site, RSS readers should not have been affected) or any other site that links to CSTM between 6 PM 12 Oct and 6 PM 13 Oct (when I learned of the attack and disabled favicons from my blogroll widgets) to scan their computers for malware. Those of you who also read/visited CSTM during that window are at a correspondingly higher risk.
I'm not thrilled that this occurred, and I would not have clicked the "show blog icon" button (I think I opted in, though I don't even remember) if I had considered the implications of displaying a remotely hosted image on my blog. I would strongly advise all of you who use Blogger to go into your blogroll settings panel and DISABLE icons.
The Google Blacklist
The other "fun" part of this is that Google flagged PVD and at least four other blogs as containing malware due to the tainted icons. Web browsers that check Google's known malware API therefore displayed a warning to attempt to stop users from visiting the affected sites. On one level, this is a well-intentioned service that Google provides. On the other hand, I'm somewhat shocked at the power they wield.
Getting the "suspicious" tag removed required that I register for Google Webmaster tools - never mind that this blog is hosted on a Google-owned site using my Google account - to manually request a review. Hours after CSTM had been declared no longer suspicious (and after I had removed favicons), PVD remained on the Google blacklist (it was finally declared clean sometime after midnight, at least six hours after I requested the review), even though Google's own diagnostic indicated that the attack originated from CSTM's compromised server.
Maybe they would have automatically re-scanned the sites and declared them clean eventually, but it strikes me as odd that they can blacklist sites without any notice to the site owner. I could see people who actually make money off their sites being seriously hurt by something like this.
That said, I suppose a day of effective downtime is a small price to pay for the lesson not to display remotely hosted icons.
PSA: Possible Malware Attack On PVD
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| Google Diagnostic Report |
I came home this afternoon to find a comment saying that my site had been flagged as unsafe for browsing due to malware. As nearly as I can tell, Casual Stroll to Mordor got hacked this morning and was serving links to malware on their RSS feed, which appears in one of the standard Blogger blogroll widgets on my site. My guess is that only people who actually clicked the link to the CSTM feed (or people with browsers that pre-load links) would have been infected, but I have no way to verify that at this time. I also have no way to request a review of my site to determine if the infection is gone, because the problem report has not yet propagated to Google Webmaster tools.
In the absence of further information, I can only recommend that readers (especially those that also read CSTM) do whatever it is they do to check for malware.
Update: According to a commenter on the CSTM refugee blog, the "icon" on Blogger's default blogroll widget is the culprit. I have disabled this "feature", and strongly advise anyone who would rather not have their blog blacklisted by Google to do the same.
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| Info from Google Diagnostics |
LOTRO's Conflicting Payment Plans
LOTRO's Isengard expansion has arrived, and it appears that my post on the pricing (which got quoted by Syp, who in turn was quoted on the Multiverse) turns out to be partially incorrect.
I had gotten the impression from Turbine's marketing materials that the two choices were to pre-order the expansion for $30 or to buy the expansion in the LOTRO Store for $60 worth of Turbine Points (albeit with the option to save money by declining to purchase the group content). Apparently there was a third option, which, in my defense, they chose not to emphasize. The $30 offer, minus a cosmetic cloak and an exp boost for low level alts, remains valid in Turbine's website store.
Long-term value of the VIP?
While I'm sure that Turbine didn't object to trying to pressure people into purchasing early, I think that Spinks (who also quoted me) was much closer to the mark than I was. This pricing model was aimed primarily at long-term subscribers (especially life-timers) who have excess points as a result of not spending their monthly stipends on consumables and fluff items. The Turbine store does not accept Turbine points, only additional real world currency.
This seems like an odd move. There's significant value in a single month of VIP subscription to LOTRO, because any character that has been played with a current subscription gets a bunch of permanent unlocks that cost well over $15 worth of points in the in-game store. There may even be value in subscribing for a few months to "rent" content that you intend to beat quickly and never play again. In the long run, though, you could permanently unlock almost everything that a VIP has through the Turbine Point store for less money than it costs to keep a subscription going for a year or longer.
By pointing out that additional cash is going to be heavily favored over Turbine Points - yes, there could be a discounted bundle later, but waiting three months will not be satisfactory to active, long-time subscribers - Turbine could very easily kick some of these folks over the fence to the Premium non-subscription side, costing themselves money in the long run.
(Incidentally, does anyone believe Turbine's excuse for the lack of a bundle - that they are technologically incapable of selling a bundle in the in-game store that will grant access to the future instances? You'd think they could implement some sort of place-holder if they wanted to.)
Arriving at the wrong conclusion
I was not alone in reaching the conclusion I did about Turbine's pre-order campaign, but I should not have been surprised. A 2009 pre-order deadline for Mirkwood also turned out to be a bluff that got extended, because Turbine priced the expansion and the price they wanted to sell the expansion at. There's very little incentive for Turbine to risk having late-comers decline to purchase some or all of the expansion after the price effectively doubled on launch day.
(Aside: The in-game store makes no mention of the out-of-game discount. Is it really a good idea to let players pay for $30 worth of Turbine Points to unlock the solo content, only to find out later that they could have had all the group content for the same amount of money?)
P.S.
All LOTRO talk aside, this was an interesting lesson for me in that my reaction focused on the specifics of my own situation, as a non-subscriber who was undecided about the expansion. By posting quickly, I missed the bigger picture of the story about VIP's. I don't think of PVD as a news site, but I do think there is some value in having my analysis up while the topic is still news. Then again, perhaps I would have caught more of the story if I had thought and waited a bit longer before posting (if for no other reason than because other folks figured it out). Ah well, perils of being a blogger I suppose.
I had gotten the impression from Turbine's marketing materials that the two choices were to pre-order the expansion for $30 or to buy the expansion in the LOTRO Store for $60 worth of Turbine Points (albeit with the option to save money by declining to purchase the group content). Apparently there was a third option, which, in my defense, they chose not to emphasize. The $30 offer, minus a cosmetic cloak and an exp boost for low level alts, remains valid in Turbine's website store.
Long-term value of the VIP?
While I'm sure that Turbine didn't object to trying to pressure people into purchasing early, I think that Spinks (who also quoted me) was much closer to the mark than I was. This pricing model was aimed primarily at long-term subscribers (especially life-timers) who have excess points as a result of not spending their monthly stipends on consumables and fluff items. The Turbine store does not accept Turbine points, only additional real world currency.
This seems like an odd move. There's significant value in a single month of VIP subscription to LOTRO, because any character that has been played with a current subscription gets a bunch of permanent unlocks that cost well over $15 worth of points in the in-game store. There may even be value in subscribing for a few months to "rent" content that you intend to beat quickly and never play again. In the long run, though, you could permanently unlock almost everything that a VIP has through the Turbine Point store for less money than it costs to keep a subscription going for a year or longer.
By pointing out that additional cash is going to be heavily favored over Turbine Points - yes, there could be a discounted bundle later, but waiting three months will not be satisfactory to active, long-time subscribers - Turbine could very easily kick some of these folks over the fence to the Premium non-subscription side, costing themselves money in the long run.
(Incidentally, does anyone believe Turbine's excuse for the lack of a bundle - that they are technologically incapable of selling a bundle in the in-game store that will grant access to the future instances? You'd think they could implement some sort of place-holder if they wanted to.)
Arriving at the wrong conclusion
I was not alone in reaching the conclusion I did about Turbine's pre-order campaign, but I should not have been surprised. A 2009 pre-order deadline for Mirkwood also turned out to be a bluff that got extended, because Turbine priced the expansion and the price they wanted to sell the expansion at. There's very little incentive for Turbine to risk having late-comers decline to purchase some or all of the expansion after the price effectively doubled on launch day.
(Aside: The in-game store makes no mention of the out-of-game discount. Is it really a good idea to let players pay for $30 worth of Turbine Points to unlock the solo content, only to find out later that they could have had all the group content for the same amount of money?)
P.S.
All LOTRO talk aside, this was an interesting lesson for me in that my reaction focused on the specifics of my own situation, as a non-subscriber who was undecided about the expansion. By posting quickly, I missed the bigger picture of the story about VIP's. I don't think of PVD as a news site, but I do think there is some value in having my analysis up while the topic is still news. Then again, perhaps I would have caught more of the story if I had thought and waited a bit longer before posting (if for no other reason than because other folks figured it out). Ah well, perils of being a blogger I suppose.
PVD On Summer Break
Public service announcement: PVD is going on end of summer break for the back half of August. Between vacation and various miscellany, I don't see a ton of time for either gaming or blogging about gaming in the next 2-3 weeks. Perhaps I could have found time to sneak in a post or two, but it's easier all around for me to close up shop and not worry about "deadlines". I should be back in time to wrap up PAX and laugh about how incorrect my incorrect predictions really were (hint: the main DDO prediction got blown out of the water this week, and even my Blizzcon predictions for October are looking shot).
Comments will stay open until I actually hit the road, and I may or may not get in another post before the end of the week. While I'm actually gone, all comments will be moderated for approval after I get back. Have a good rest of summer, and I'll see you all around the beginning of September!
Comments will stay open until I actually hit the road, and I may or may not get in another post before the end of the week. While I'm actually gone, all comments will be moderated for approval after I get back. Have a good rest of summer, and I'll see you all around the beginning of September!
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