Let's Talk About Guild Wars...

Which, not coincidentally, is #1 for April.

Now, I will freely admit before I get started that I have never yet gotten to play the retail version of Guild Wars.
Having gotten that disclaimer out of the way, I DID participate in the open event at E3 last year, and although that was what the ArenaNet folks called "early pre-beta" it was amazing. The graphics are utterly incredible, the sound worked IN THE BETA, (take that, Asheron's Call 2! 4 months into retail indeed! HAH!) the chat system worked, (!) the quest system worked, and a good chuck of the skill system was up and running.
Over a year later, the game is up and running in retail, and appears to be continuing the trend. Apparently, between ArenaNet (the programmers / creators) and NCSoft (the owners of ArenaNet and publishers of Guild Wars) they've managed a solid, relatively bug-free launch, and are maintaining a quality product. Notably, this is the only MMORPG currently available that does not have a subscription fee; once you purchase the retail game, you can play for free as much as you want. Updates are free, with the exception of occasional retail expansion packs, which NCSoft promises are 100% optional.
Oh, I've gotten your attention now, eh?
Now, to me this isn't much of a surprise: ArenaNet is mostly made up of former Blizzard personnel, notably members of the teams behind StarCraft and Diablo II. So they start out with both experience and talent. To me, ArenaNet is to Blizzard what Megadeth is to Metallica: castoff members who've made good in their own right. (Metallica once sported Megadeth frontman Dave Mustaine as a member. After they booted him out for drinking, he got Megadeth together, and now they're working on their 14th album. Not bad, for a castoff, eh?)
NCSoft is the company responsible for City of Heroes, City of Villains, Tabula Rasa, and Lineage I and II. They make great games and are clearly willing to invest in their future products, which is good. They've also set up an online store, so that you can buy their products without having to go through retailers, which is a courtesy.
Now if you'd like to get a look at the game, there are several different trailers available in the GamersHell.com download section here.
There are other reviews available most recently at ActionTrip and GameDaily. I'm looking forward to this game, and will be playing soon.

The PlayStation 3, Folks: Your DVD Library Just Got Upgraded!

Ken Kutaragi Speaks:

"Users will be able to store their content in an online storage server called the 'Cell Storage.' And the Cell processor, when it's not being used, can refine the content's quality. We call it the 'aging' process. For example, users can 'age' their Standard Definition (SD) video and up-convert it to High Definition (HD) video. We have many plans [for the PS3], but this 'Cell Storage' service is something that we definitely intend to launch. By using the Cell's security feature, users will be able to rip DVDs that include copyright protection and lay it in the storage area to refine its video quality."

Basically, what this means, if they can really get it to work, is that the Cell processor will upload your DVD video, then interpolate the pixels that "should be there" to up the resolution to HDTV standard, and give it back to you.

This is just one of the many things Kutaragi had to say about PS3, but it's a very, very interesting one, and one which begs a question: seeing as the PS3 is BLU-Ray capable, why upgrade to BD-DVD movies when you can convert your existing DVDs using this Cell-aging process?
Hmmmmm.
Also interesting was this little bit:

"In terms of codecs, the Cell has the power to easily transcode high-quality [pictures and audio] in real-time. So [file] formats won't really be too important," added Kutaragi.

Which means that basically as long as the format is something that the PS3 can understand AT ALL, it can transcode and return it in whatever form you like. I want to see the apps to do that; I really, really do.
More importantly, though, is that I'd like to see an eventual release of the OS the PS3 uses, to make an SDK available for open-source developers. After all, the PS3 does sport a hard drive; you can certainly upload to it basically anything you feel like, if it'll run. One can hope, although despite their promises not to make future consoles Sony-specific in terms of hardware / software (Memory Stick just LEAPS to mind,) it does seem somewhat doubtful. Kutaragi can say that he and Sony consider SD and Memory Stick to be one and the same if he wants to; I've seen tooooooo many manufacturers go down the hellish road of proprietary equipment to take it for granted. I hope you're not kidding, guys; I'll believe it when I see it.

What A Surprise! Microsoft Breaks Stuff, Gets Hacked

First, they break stuff...

"By default when you build an application against the .Net Framework it will default to the version you built it on," Roxe said. "If you have 2.0 on your machine and the application is written against 1.1, it will by default try to run on 1.1."

Which means, when you try to run old M$ applications on your freshly upgraded machine, the .NET framework 2 will crash your computer and irritate the hell out of you.

Then, they got hacked. The M$ security check, which checks to make sure your copy of Windows is "Fer Realz, And Stuff" before you update, has already been bypassed. My favorite quote from M$ about this?

Microsoft confirmed that the technique could circumvent the piracy check, but a representative said Monday that the company is not worried.

"This represents very little threat to Microsoft," the representative said. "We expected counterfeiters to try a number of different methods to circumvent the safeguards provided by Windows Genuine Advantage."

Which, of course, begs the question: why the hell try to prevent it if you know they're gonna get around it anyway?

...But How Revolutionary IS It?

IGN Converage of the Nintendo Revolution.

Nintendo believes that technology alone cannot advance videogames, which is why it plans to take Revolution into a dramatic new direction.

This is true. The thing is about the size of a CD-ROM drive, which isn't really very big. However, in a fit of stealing ideas from Sony, because they were tired of getting their asses kicked, Nintendo announced one feature that makes me want this thing: it is 100% backward compatible.
What do I mean 100%? I mean, this thing will play every single game ever offered on any Nintendo console anywhere ever. Apparently, Nintendo has built in a software console emulation system into Revolution, allowing you to download from Nintendo (I'm waiting to see the prices before I get TOO excited) ROMs of all games for all previous systems, INCLUDING the GameCube, to be played in software emulation on the Revolution.
If it works and is affordable, that makes this system a must-buy. I doubt seriously that it will replace anyone's PlayStation 3, but it will certainly sit next to it in the entertainment system.
Now, the downside of all this is that Nintendo is being very, very hush-hush about the actual hardware capabilities of the system. Their marketing guy told the G4 interviewers that the controller would be something that would be able to play all the previous games, with all the different controllers, and added "imagine what that would look like." Of course, that doesn't help at all. I have no idea how much hardware they're really going to be able to cram into the thing, it really is amazingly small. If they would have stuck an LCD screen on it, I would have said it was a fat handheld.
If the Revolution has the hardware to back up their hype, this could be a really cool system. But I don't really know how many more Mario games I'm going to be willing to play, when I can get the same games but WITHOUT Mario on the PlayStation 3. This one, it seems to me, is really good for kids and people with kids, but for now, I'm holding off until I learn more about it.

PlayStation 3! Oh, It's True.

IGN goes on and on about it.

Sony isn't joking around either, the PS3 is the focus of the conference. More details as the come, but be sure to check out the linked stories below for full PS3 coverage from the SCEI event.

Seriously, this system looks amazing.

The fact sheet shows that Sony not only brought serious hardware to the table, it shows that they have a plan. Most consumers probably don't know this, but the DVD standard is on the verge of being replaced, and there are two contenders to the title: Blu-Ray, by Sony / Matsushita, and "HD-DVD," by Toshiba. Sadly, Toshiba is about to get slapped, because they don't have a righteous game system to pimp their standard. Sony does, so the PS3 will contain Blu-Ray capability, which more than doubles the storage space of a conventional DVD (Think of the map sizes! Oh, my God.) and will conveniently play ALL PlayStation 1 and 2 games. not like the XBOX 360, which will play the "top-rated" XBOX titles.
Sony went with Nvidia to provide the GPU for the PS3, and the final product looks incredible. At the press conference at E3, Sony ran gameplay footage of Killzone 2, which looked better in-game than the Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within movie did. Kevin Pereira of G4TV said the magic words: "HALO killer." Then, he said "XBOX 360 killer."
After seeing the demonstrations, I'm actually inclined to agree. M$ just didn't bring anything to the table that was impressive enough to overcome the utterly incredible power of the Cell processor, and certainly nothing that looked as good as the lineup of launch titles the Sony people brought to E3. This one is gonna be on my entertainment center 6 months after it releases.
6 months, because I want a little pad so they can iron out the bugs. Every new console launch has a few problems, but by 6 months, I won't have missed much, and most of the problems will be fixed. Sony's strategy to get Blu-Ray into the homes of America seems likely to work, and I'm looking forward to it.

Oh, yeah. And if you get two HDTVs, you can play your games across them both in 32:9 panoramic view from your PS3. Wow.

XBOX 360 Impressions

The Fact Sheet

The information contained in this fact sheet relates to a prerelease product that may be substantially modified before its first commercial release. Accordingly, the information may not accurately describe or reflect the product when first commercially released. This fact sheet is provided for informational purposes only, and Microsoft makes no warranties, express or implied, with respect to the fact sheet or the information contained in it.

But, aside from the necessary ass-covering, this looks like it's pretty solid as the final product.
Now, for me, it seemed like Microsoft was much more concerned with updating their marketing strategy than their hardware - although the hardware is a significant step forward, the games and products that they've showed at E3 simply weren't "next-gen" enough to really blow the lid off, so to speak.
However, M$ is really pushing the marketing, including features in XBOX Live! that allow you to do such wonderful things as "design your own t-shirts that other people will be able to buy - from Microsoft> Way to make money off of other people's effort, M$. Somehow I don't see that being very popular. I also suspect that their much-ballyhooed "Gamer Card" idea, which lets other gamers online see how good (or BAD) you are at games, will be DOA. No-one wants to admit that they suck. Ever.
Now, like I said, the hardware is pretty nice, but from the stuff that we saw at E3, it seems like Sony is much more aware of the capabilities of their system. XBOX 360's hardware seems to be about on a par with PS3, but the launch games, at this point, just plain aren't as much of a "WOW!" experience as those chosen by Sony. For me, this one will stay on the shelf.

It Just Keeps Getting Weirder

Today, we just plain have a bunch of weird crap. Here's the four best.

First, gamers have long been suspecting that Infinium Labs' "Phantom" was exactly that, vaporware. They're right: it's nowhere to be found. Not that anybody is surprised by this, but why even bother to issue a press release?
Second, if you know you have an assload of drugs in your car, why call OnStar? Well, because you locked your toddler into the drugmobile, apparently. Dumbass.
Third, they're finally getting around to disciplining the Florida judge who told one lady to "close your legs and stop having kids." Granted, that's not really appropriate behavior for a judge, but damn, it's about time SOMEbody told her that.
And last but certainly not least, the FAA announces that they're stopping a new trend before it starts: NO BILLBOARDS IN SPACE! That's right, if you thought of advertising your company in a REALLY BIG way, you're outta luck. Not that I can really imagine any company being asinine enough to do that, but hey. Why not make a law against it anyway.

Just thought you guys might like to see some of the silliness that really goes on on a daily basis.

Announcing Even More Of My Ranting

Xeno's Guide To:

This is the place where you can find out all about anything I have seen fit to write about. Games, consoles, PC parts, movies, music, you name it.

This is my guide to just about everything.

As a way to say "HI!" to the three of you that read my page, I've opened by posting my comments and first impressions of the XBOX 360, PlayStation 3, and Nintendo Revolution from the E3 demos and press conferences. Enjoy!

Weirdness Happens

Billy Crystal to audience: "Shove your cellphones up your ass"

"So I finish the show, I come out, it was really hard to do, they gave me a great ovation... I said, `Ladies and gentlemen, you've been a great audience except we had 12 cellphones go off, so for the 12 of you who may have ruined it for these other people, the next time you go into a theatre... don't put on your cellphone, I was very kind, turn it off or don't take them, or simply shove them up your a**.' It's just horrible."

See? I wasn't kidding...
Now frankly, if you're on stage and you're talking to the audience about "darker and more personal things" then you are wearing your heart on your sleeve and taking the risk that someone will be a jerk. Learn to cope. But maybe that's just me. I hate people who can't turn off their cell phones for even a minute, too, but that doesn't excuse someone who gets paid as much as Billy Crystal does telling them to stick them up their asses. That's a little ridiculous.

In other news, United Airlines has issues with its stewardesses. How do I know? Because, despite the fact that United is in the process of going bankrupt AGAIN, for the who-knows-how-manyth time, their stewardesses are so upset about the decreases in their pensions that they're - wait for it - stripping. Now, before you get all excited, let me make sure you understand - five stewardesses, ranging from 55 to 64, are getting naked for a calendar. Yes, just like in Calendar Girls. Yes, it was a bad idea then, too.


No, really, I know. I didn't come up with it.

The MPAA Beats The RIAA, Hands Down

Especially at lawsuits.

The MPAA has stated that since these sites have been shut down, the downloads are becoming more and more unsuccessful due to lack of users and the lack of files being online. Most users though seem to say their experience with Torrents has been better since there are more sites to choose from.

Slyck News not only agrees, but goes even farther, pointing out that of the sites that the MPAA has supposedly "closed," virtually all of them are still carrying functional BitTorrent trackers - which means they're not closed at all. However, if you believe the MPAA, 90% or so of the sites they've sued no longer offer torrent files. If that's true, it means that the MPAA is certainly doing better in their war on their customers than the RIAA - there's thus far been essentially no change whatsoever in the number of downloaders, or the numbers of music files traded.

What's really interesting, of course, neither the MPAA or the RIAA will admit. Both groups have changed their marketing strategies to reflect the new situation, despite their constant refusal to admit it. Movies go from theatrical release to DVD in an average of 6 months now, down from an average of nearly 18 months just 3 years ago. Despite the fact that online music stores have a catalog representing only maybe a sixth of all CD-recorded music annually, the record labels are now requiring new bands to allow online music sales as part of their standard contracts - a HUGE difference in policy.
Of course, neither group will admit that this change in policies has had any impact whatsoever upon piracy or filetrading - certainly, it's the lawsuits, not the fact that you don't have to wait 2 years to watch a new movie at home. Naturally, it's the lawsuits, and the law-passing, not the fact that more music goes to Rhapsody, ITunes, and Napster every single day.
Speaking of Napster, they've finally done what the idiot record labels should have done years ago. They've set up a service where you can make unlimited downloads every month, directly to your MP3 player, for $15. I may have to buy an iPod.

File This Under "Nobody Cares"

Asheron's Call 2: Legions released!

Should be popular among Turbine's legions of fans.


Turbine recently announced that Asheron's Call 2: Legions has shipped to stores in the U.S. and Europe. This will be the first title that Turbine will have funded, developed and published by themselves. Asheron's Call 2: Legions features over 100 quests, has two new playable races (Empyreans and the Drudge), and three new prestige classes in a game world that is 30% bigger.

Obviously, since no-one plays this game after its first year of constant skill resets and system-crashing game bugs, this goes under "Nobody Cares" in the file cabinet.

I mean, an expansion pack for a game that went a WHOLE YEAR before they could get the chat system to work? WHO CARES!?! Why even bother? You'd think that Turbine would want this game to just quietly fade away into obscurity so that they could start their next project.
I, for one, however, am never buying a Turbine game again if I know what I'm getting. Ever. AC2 was so very, very bad that there's no redemption from it. It was Derek Smart bad. It was - dare I say it - World War II Online bad.

However, Red Vs. Blue Season 3 is about to conclude - 2 more episodes - and Season 4 will release once they get the Season 3 DVD ready to sell. Woohoo!

Astonishingly: Your Friend, The U. S. Court of Appeals

The Broadcast Flag is illegal!

A unanimous three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit said the FCC brazenly overstepped its authority. Regardless of the potential for piracy, the judges ruled, the FCC could regulate only the design of devices that handle the transmission of programs, not ones that help consumers view or record them or play them back.

See, back a few months ago, the FCC decided that having people record TV shows was bad, because the TV station might be airing a movie, and then you could share the movie with your friends. So, they instituted a rule requiring a "broadcast flag" to be sent out in every TV signal, so that only flag-compliant VCRs, DVRs, and PCs would be able to record broadcast TV programs. This would allow the movie industry to regulate what movies you could record, what you could record them with, and what you could play them back on - even WHEN you could play them back.
Enter the D.C. Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals.

Thanks to the intervention of the court, the FCC's rule was repealed, and manufacturers are no longer required to comply with the provisions of the Broadcast Flag Rule. According to the court, the FCC

had abused its authority by forcing manufacturers to use new anti-piracy technology in equipment that only receives TV signals from July 1st. Finally, the court could find nothing in law or legislative history that backs the FCC’s broadcast ruling claims .

CDFreaks adds the following:

For the FCC and MPAA, this is actually very bad timing as by the time they do manage to properly enforce a broadcast flag ruling (if successful), the majority of consumers may have upgraded to digital TV displays and equipment that lack broadcast flag support. When it comes to HDTV, so far only 10% of the population had a HDTV set by the end of 2004.

Oh, and while we're putting the limelight on the antipiracy fight yet again: did you know the Boy Scouts can now get MERIT BADGES for intellectual property law, thanks to the MPAA? That's right. It's real.
How goofy can you get.

In other news, despite the fact that the Sony PSP has only been on the market for a few weeks, the encryption for the UMD (Universal Media Disc, Sony's proprietary standard for the PSP,)has already been broken by at least one pirate group. It is suspected that the pirate group is working on a way to create bootable game images that can be played from the Memory Stick, which will allow filesharers to download and play PSP games with a large enough Memory Stick. There's some evidence that one hacker, at least, has already gotten software to run on the PSP from a Memory Stick, so it's not likely to be too long before this is generally available; it only remains to be seen whether the same techniques can be used to duplicate UMD movie releases. For some reason, I suspect those efforts, as well, will meet with success, and we'll see a flood of movies available for PSP - MS being shared online in a few months at most.

HAPPY CINCO DE MAYO!!

Well, it should surprise no-one that Hollywood is lying.
p2p.net reporting...

“Despite fears that internet piracy would dent its profits, Hollywood has had a buoyant year,” says the Guardian Unlimited.

For "buoyant" read almost forty-five billion dollars in revenues.

That's right, 45 BILLION DOLLARS. Apparently, despite their attempts to link file sharing with piracy, and despite their attempts to claim that piracy and filesharing are ruining the industry, they somehow managed to make 45 billion dollars last year.
Let me call a "Waaaaaaaaaaaah!"mbulance.

Bear in mind at all times that the MPAA and the RIAA have a vested interest in you believing that filesharing and piracy are the same thing.
See, PIRACY is where you illegally duplicate someone else's music or movie, and SELL IT. FILESHARING is the same as giving a copy to you buddy for free. Not the same.
PIRACY hurts everybody. FILESHARING increases interest in the property - because a legitimate, store-bought copy always has features that the shared file doesn't. For example, in movies, a shared movie typically has less than a THIRD of the screen resolution and picture quality of a DVD.
(Of course, this has problems in and of itself: the MPAA has been frantically trying to pass a law saying that that kind of degradation of the product constitutes an illegal act in and of itself.)

Oh, well.

In other news, Pariah just got released, so all the Xbox gamers should be happy, and EverCrack 2 is getting its first expansion pack.
GIVE SONY MORE MONEY!! YOU, YES YOU RIGHT THERE!

Heh.

Happy 5 May, everyone.

...And In Gaming News...

Unreal Engine 3 is the coolest game engine ever. No, seriously.

Unreal Engine 3 is provided as one unified codebase that compiles on PC and all supported next-generation console platforms. All game content and data files are compatible across all supported platforms, for fast turnaround time between code and content development on PC, and playtesting on console or PC.

Read up on this, folks; this is where the next generation of games are going to come from. Just ask IGN: at GDC 2004 and 2005 they took a good look at the engine and its power, and were very impressed.

The first games that are CONFIRMED to be under development for this engine are, of course, Unreal 3 and Unreal Tournament 2006, but the engine itself should at this point already be licensing out to developers, so hopefully we'll see more games in it soon.
For the curious, you can get the tech demo here, and see the glory for yourself.

By the way, Guild Wars shipped on the 28th of April, and should be available in stores tomorrow. Woohoo!

Oh, and by the way, not only has PSP Video 9 been released, but there are apparently a ton more movies in the works for PSP, as well.

Prison Time For You! Yours Truly, Orrin Hatch

Slyck News offers this tidbit today.

It appears that Senator Orin Hatch (R-UT) can finally rest his hat a on sucessful pro-copyright act. Co-signed by Patrick Leahy (D-VT), John Cornyn (R-TX) and Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), the Family Entertainment and Copyright Act of 2005 (FECA) amends the existing copyright laws by criminalizing two particular infringing activities. President George W. Bush signed the Act on Wednesday.

This is the legislation I was talking about earlier, that allows ClearPlay to edit DVDs. Wonderful! just like I said, it also provides for stiff fines and prison time if you're caught in possession of a movie prior to its theatrical release. You can read the actual text of the bill here.
Not coincidentally, RIAA and MPAA lawsuits have topped 10,000 people - at an average settlement of $3000 a pop, that's $30 million, folks. Oh, and by the way, it's also 2 percent of ALL lawsuits brought before federal courts in the last 3 years.

How pitiful is that? There's no real excuse for 2 organizations with no legal standing being able to extort $30 million from their customers with the complicity of our lawmakers and courts, when there are so many other, more urgent things that said lawmakers and courts could be doing with their time.
Our time.
We pay for it.
Remember that. Taxes pay for the court time that's spent suing taxpayers for using p2p networks.
Doesn't it make you wish you had one of these?