City of Heroes/Villains players will be able to make their own content!

I found this little tidbit of information over on Massively  ...

City of Heroes lead designer announces player-generated content system by Michael Zenke Apr 28th 2008 @ 12:45PM Filed under: Super-hero, City of Heroes, City of Villains, Patches In an announcement coinciding with the game's fourth anniversary, City of Heroes Lead Designer Matt Miller has announced a bold new feature. Coming in a future update, players will be able to craft their own missions, objectives, and story arcs. The system, which sounds very similar to Nevrax's experimental Ryzom Ring project, will give players the tools they need to make their own City of Heroes adventures. Once they're completed, players can upload the scenarios to NCsoft's service, where they can be played by other players. Afterwards, participants will be able to rate their experiences with the content. City of Heroes lead designer announces player-generated content system - Massively

 

What an awesome concept!!  In Star Wars Galaxies, players can create events, including races and kill mob/pvp events, using the built in Storyteller items.  This may be a similar thing, or it may take things to the next step .. it'll be interesting to see how the characters can benefit from running through the player made events.  Can they get xp? currency? stuff? 

It's definitely an interesting trend.

Conventions of Gameplay

Tabula Rasa just released information on their Veterans rewards. Veteran rewards .. what a concept.

I remember (yes it's a "back in my day" story) when people continued to play a game just for the fun! Sony Online Entertainment was the first company that I was aware of to offer Veterans rewards, but now everyone does. It's just the thing to do!

I remember when Star Wars Galaxies came out with their veterans rewards … at the time I had stopped playing SWG and logged back in to see what I got. They had a bug with the timing so that it counted from when your account was created and didn't discount any time when your account was inactive. *grin* I got lots of goodies, and continued to play on the Test server for a while after that.

But why offer the rewards? They give you neet and useful things like a port back to your bindspot, a cool house item, a minor bonus to a skill, your own shuttlecraft, in game titles … all fun and useful things, but nothing gamebreaking. Nothing that you say "I have to have this or I can't play". Nothing that you can't get similar rewards from quests, or tradeskills .. but usually not the exact same thing. So why offer them?

There's the cool factor .. you have something that not everyone else has, something to separate you from the newbies, something to show how long you've stayed with a game. They add conviencies, and fun, but not a whole lot of game advantage.

But over all .. they're pretty much just cool.

A ROMAN GLASS GAMING DIE

On auction at Christie's

See!  Gaming isn't something new!  LOL ... sooo coool.

A ROMAN GLASS GAMING DIE Several polyhedra in various materials with similar symbols are known from the Roman period. Modern scholarship has not yet established the game for which these dice were used.

I found this on the Girls Entertainment Network blog ... made me smile.

the car is playing the Mario theme :)

And 4th Edition is on it's way!

On June 6, Wizards of the Coast will officially roll out the fourth edition of the D&D franchise, as well as a new suite of digital tools, and the world-famous game will never be the same. (from C-Net)

Woot! Our core rule books are pre-ordered (yay for 5% discount from Amazon!)

WOOT!!

Greetings from Amazon.com.
We now have estimated delivery dates for the
Kindle order you placedon 3/10/08. We are now estimating
thatyour Kindle
will arrive between 4/17/2008 and 4/24/2008. We'll contact
youagain to let
you know when your order is shipped

Only another week or two to wait ... wee ...

I want my Kindle!

So I ordered an Amazon Kindle 3 weeks ago and it's STILL back-ordered!

It was a tough choice between the Sony Reader and the Kindle but I ended up picking up the Kindle due to the reported PDF support and the fact that quite a few Sony Reader owners have moved to Kindles and are quite happy with the move. Also the Reader has a few challenges with PDFs and a lot of my stuff is on PDF!

So .. 3 weeks and no buyers remorse yet, so I think I made the right choice. We'll see when I get it. We're going to Oasis 21 in a little over a month, and hopefully it'll be here before then.

Do you have a kindle or eReader?

Gamasutra - IMGDC: Nick Fortugno On The Rise Of The Casual MMO

Check out this interesting analysis of Casual MMOs and why they are here to stay.

IMGDC: Nick Fortugno On The Rise Of The Casual MMO IMGDC: Nick Fortugno On The Rise Of The Casual MMO Nick Fortugno, co-founder of casual game company RebelMonkey, was originally supposed to address the audience at IMGDC on "What Your Mother and Your Ten Year-Old Can Teach you About MMOs." However, when he noted how "on the ball" the attendees of IMGDC seemed, he decided to diverge a bit.

Gamasutra - IMGDC: Nick Fortugno On The Rise Of The Casual MMO

YouTube - Boston Dynamics Big Dog

Check this out .. it's amazing what they can do with computers these days. 

The AT-AT to be!