Afternoon, gang! Another week, another Multiverse. This episode we discuss the week’s new (LotRO going F2P, MMOs have no point, and more) as well as tackle a very on topic discussion: what is the point of MMOs and what keeps us coming back. Later, Ferrel and I debate about buying gold in MMOs. He thinks it’s time to move past shunning these players and for studios to start giving us their own options. I disagree and it leads to some interesting banter.
This was a good show. The chat room was booming and, at one pointed, a heated debate even broke out. Thanks to everyone who came out to listen live! We’d love to see even more people in there, so join us this Friday at 7:30PM EST by clicking the link above or checking out our sidebar.
I will say this though, we had a couple of technical problems with the stream this week and had to break to fix them. On the plus side, it allowed some very strange audio to come through on Skype. Gavin’s and my mind run amuck
and fun ensues.
Without further delay, to the notes!
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[audio: http://vagary.tv/multiverse/episodes/multiverse19.mp3]
The Multiverse – Episode #19 – “In Defense of Gold Buying (and the Point of MMOs)”
Intro:
- What have we been playing/up to this past week?
- New writers at Game by Night
- Thank you to Merric of Casual Stroll to Mordor for the 5-star review. *Sorry, I forgot to mention this during the recording. I’ll get you next time, Merric!
Roundtable:
- News:
- Symantec analyzes stolen accounts.
- 44 million of them! Wayi – 16 million; Ncsoft – 2 million (60,000 from Aion); WoW – 16,000.
- Sony announces new Star Wars MMO.
- Free to play with a subscription option to access more content. Browser based, mini-games.
- Syp reports, “Players will socialize in hubs, meet iconic Star Wars characters, and head off together or solo for a variety of activities, including spaceship battles, tower defense, card games, droid programming and speeder bike racing.”
- About 20 mini-games present at launch.
- Free to play with a subscription option to access more content. Browser based, mini-games.
- Bioware claims SW:TOR to contain “50 novels of content”
- ““The thing that has been a challenge for us on Old Republic is that people tried to convince us these limitations were canon – that they were to be respected, you know? That you could not, in fact, put interesting bits in an MMO because that was now sacrilege.”
- Symantec analyzes stolen accounts.
- Main Topic: What is the point of MMOs – why do we play, what keeps us playing, and, really, what is the point? How do we feel about Bioware’s feelings that standard MMOs are pointless and what does this mean for TOR?
- Debate: Is it time to accept gold buyers?
Host Segments:
- Chris’ Blog of the Week: Not a blog, but a column! The Game Archaeologist.
Close:
- Shoutouts:
- Check out the new Vagary! We’re going to E3.
- Contact us at: multiversepodcast@gmail.com
Relevant Links:
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