Vox ex Machina

No. It’s Not Just You: Guild Wars 2 is Down

Helvetica — Thu, 16 May 2013 22:03:32 +0000

It’s been almost an hour now, but the Guild Wars 2 US servers suffered an issue that caused login to fail—for those who happened to be online at the time the error was somewhat stunning.

It paraphrases to thus: Your trial version of Guild Wars 2 has expired!

For those concerned about this error, don’t worry, your account has not suddenly been turned into a trial account—GW2 is just having issues with their server room hamsters and is working on the problem. The latest tweets out of the @GuildWars2 Twitter account are keeping us up to date…but the natives are getting restless.

We’ve had this happen before (although to a lesser extent) and it was resolved fairly quickly.

However, now that the down time has been going on for more than an hour—approaching two as I type this post—there might be other repercussions from the failure.

We will try to keep you updated.

UPDATE 16 May 2013 3:30pm PST: The login servers appear to have been fixed and it is possible to log into GW2 once again.

Rosalind and Robert Lutece from Bioshock Infinite by *DarrenGeers

Helvetica — Mon, 15 Apr 2013 15:48:14 +0000

Rosalind and Robert Lutece by *DarrenGeers on deviantART

Thumping: Firefall and the Social Impact of Player-Driven Dynamic Events

Helvetica — Fri, 12 Apr 2013 15:00:00 +0000

Red 5 Studio’s MMO shooter game Firefall is still working its way through the stages of a beta and right now it’s a highly freeform, sandbox styled game. As a result, it also contains numerous dynamic events. Additionally, much advancement in the game requires resource gathering and management and this is done with an activity called “thumping.” This resource gathering event is imitated by players and appears on the radar of the map—informing other players that its happening—and being around when someone is thumping encourages others to participate by rewarding them with experience and resources. The folks at MMO Anthropology have written up an essay on the practice and strategies developed.

Link, via MMO Anthropology and YouTube.

Trion Worlds’ Defiance MMO Off to a Rocky Start, Socially Inept

Helvetica — Wed, 10 Apr 2013 17:53:33 +0000

The new Syfy Channel science fiction show Defiance debut recently as well as the launch of their MMO partnered with Trion Worlds. While the beta went fairly well, like most launches it left Trion’s servers battleworn and scarred and many customers left out in the cold. So far, glitches have affected their chat system, voice system, and even logins to such an extent that when the game is playable it’s a well-populated land-of-hungry-ghosts. Assistant editor for SiliconANGLE, Kyt Dotson, gives a run-down of the social failure of Defiance.

When Cloud Connectivity Goes Bad: Diablo III and SimCity 5

Helvetica — Sat, 30 Mar 2013 03:36:46 +0000

In what seems to be the next-gen of DRM, Blizzard and EA have made bones with a terrible idea: adding always-connected to solo games that have a multiplayer aspect. In the case of Diablo III it hurt sales and wounded a fan favorite by burdening it with an always-on connection, with SimCity Online it added unnecessary conditions to play and made it impossible to get onto during launch. Kyt Dotson opines about this “feature” as EA and Blizzard have seen it and how abusing the cloud could negatively affect the gaming industry on SiliconANGLE with “Abusing the Cloud: When Solo Games Get Connected”.

Minecraft Saturday #3: Better Pits, Gardens, and Nickel Arcades – MMO Anthropology

Helvetica — Fri, 15 Mar 2013 15:00:00 +0000

This last Saturday we decided to colonize a far-away locale from the starter region that we set out in; after that some people ran about and started on their own projects. Several projects worth showing off turn out to be lovely things like a railway network across the ocean.

Then there’s Dracul Draconicus’s Nickel Arcade.

https://twitter.com/mmoanthropology

Follow @mmonathropology on Twitter to know when we’re streaming on Twitch.tv and if we’re playing a game that you can come along with. Fridays we tend to play different multiplayer and MMO games; and on Saturday it’s about Minecraft.

Link, via YouTube and MMO Anthropology.

Mojang Pondering Family-Friendly "Realms” Minecraft World Service

Helvetica — Fri, 15 Mar 2013 02:43:28 +0000

As the publisher of the most popular sandbox indie game ever, Mojang is thinking about getting into the Minecraft server business: except for families. Insofar, servers exist everywhere, Minecraft has been able to do multiplayer for a while now and lots of different hosting companies will host servers for people to build and sandbox in—but generally these are expensive or technically difficult. Feeling that hardcore Minecraft gamers are well taken care of, Mojang would like to target families. Kyt Dotson at SiliconANGLE has the story.

Minecraft Saturday #2: Long Live the Ender Dragon – MMO Anthropology

Helvetica — Thu, 14 Mar 2013 15:00:00 +0000

"The Ender Dragon is dead; long live the Ender Dragon!"

This past Saturday, MMO Anthropology went into the game of Minecraft with a large group of players and we asked our viewers and supporters to give us projects. TJ ("rkou1") planned to lead us in an attack against the games "end boss" called the Ender Dragon and this is the story of that assault.

https://twitter.com/mmoanthropology

Link, via YouTube and MMO Anthropology.

Minecraft Saturday #1: There’s a Huge Pit In It – MMO Anthropology

Helvetica — Wed, 13 Mar 2013 15:00:00 +0000

MMO Anthropology recently set up a Minecraft server for the live stream.

http://twitch.tv/mmoanthropology

This is a breakdown of interviews from those viewers who played with us on Saturday, 2 February 2013. An examination of their experience and how they approached a survival vanilla Minecraft server from scratch.

Players reviewed:
rkou1 (TJ)
RockandRoll
ArienneKeith
Kazz
eemfibble (Spyral)
Omnicynic (Nelson Williams)

Link, via YouTube and MMO Anthropology.

Damsel in Distress: Part 1 – Tropes vs Women in Video Games

Helvetica — Mon, 11 Mar 2013 01:53:00 +0000

Link, via FeministFrequency on YouTube.