A Sad Day for Star Wars Fans

I am sorry to report the end of a game that was very dear to my heart.  I have always enjoyed this game on one level or another, and seeing its death saddens me.  Following the loss of great games because of developers like Earth And Beyond, Ever Quest (Yes its still running but they started posting so many updates they broke the game), Final Fantasy XI and IV (both screwy arse games) and even more obscure games I've played, this one stings.  I've lost other games though the actions of people as well... Ultima Online I felt more or less cut off from my guild, The Realm my guild not only crumbled but back stabbing became the norm, Ashron's Call (way too complicated and too many jerks), and World of Warcraft (I can never find anyone to play with and the latest expansion has killed my love of the game).

The loss of Star Wars Galaxies as outlined here in this letter is startling to me.  I truly cannot express how much I loved the original iteration of that game.  I spent more happy hours in that game then almost any other that I can remember.  I reached Jedi in that title, not once, but twice.  I held a home, had family, and was valued as a member of a community.

When the Combat Update (CU) and New Game Experience (NGE) for a very long time ruined the game for me.  I could barely stand to sit down and play it, and I tried several times.  They took my crafter and made her CU 1, they took my awesome rifle using Jedi-in-training and turned her into a baby Padawan that couldn't hold a rifle, much less a sword.  In short the CU and the NGE f'ed up the game to the point I no longer felt I could play it.

I have been waiting years for the EMU and other projects to get an original version of the game back up after a petition on the internet of over 10,000 people failed to turn the game back.  I've waited, and waited, and now EMU up.  However I decided that I'd give the original game a chance since Sony gave me 45 days free.  And now... they will be shutting it down in the middle of the holiday season.  I was finding the game to be some what enjoyable, and fun.  I was experimenting, starting to find people... and now its dead again.

Thanks Sony.  I've spent more money on your MMO games then I really care to admit.  You change your games because you want to imitate others (look at EQ2 originally, now compare it to WoW and how it plays now).  I cannot properly express how tired I am of you doing this to your games.  There is a reason I swore to never pay you money to play a computer game of yours ever again.  I've just had a great reminder of why I made that decision so long ago.

To everyone else, I welcome you to join me on the EMU servers, here's how to reach them.  You will need a copy (any copy) of the disks to play the game with EMU.  Have no fear, they sell for CHEAP on the internet.  Here's a search I pulled up on Google, and Ebay.  You can only have 1 account, but with one set of disks each person in your family can play for free with their own accounts.

And with that I'll probably play through my 45 days.  I can't see any reason not to.  However I will be transitioning over to EMU.  Until the time comes that EA decides I am worthy of a beta key to Old Republic, its my best bet for a MMO fix.  Drop me a comment some time, maybe we'll get together.  And now a moment of silence for the death of SWG...  good night, and god speed.

Edit:  Kotaku found an article by one of the original developers and is in fact where I first heard of the demise of the game.  You can read their article here and the blog article by Raph Koster here.  

Edit 2:  The man I admittedly used to think of in terms so non-politely that I couldn't form a  comprehensive sentence about has apparently also spoken out about the closure of SWG.  John Smedley  spoke to Massively about the closure, what it means, and why.  While most of it I will talk about in a post probably tomorrow after I've had some time to gain perspective and cool my heels, I did want to make one comment tonight.  In a stunning turn around Smedley said and I quote the Massively interview (Question by Massively included for perspective's sake):

"SOE has taken flak for various problems in the game's past -- do you think the company will take a reputation hit for this decision, and are you prepared for that?

There's really nothing we can do about it. We've taken some hard-knocks for SWG in years past with the NGE. We've apologized for it. It was a mistake, and not one we're going to make as a company ever again."

 I've already talked about the petition to revert SWG to a pre-NGE status.  Smedley said at the time that it was required for them to continue to move forward, and there was no way that they could, or would ever revert the game.  This was the point at which I really started to dislike the man with out having ever met him, and this admission of it being a mistake, (something I said it was when it launched) goes go a little way towards mending fences.  While at the moment I still seriously doubt SOE's ability to excite me and make me want to play any of their games once more (I even find DC Universe to be by and large boring... and I LOVE hero games) I might keep an open ear now... just in case.

Time to Update ... or Not...

Recently I have held off updating for a few reasons, mostly because I had hoped that my readers would be interested enough to create some artwork or something for my web page.  Its been three months, and I've had zero entries.  There for I now consider the contest closed, I will not accept any submissions, and will have to seriously consider the deletion of this blog, or if I should even consider my readers when it comes to my posts, since to date I have had zero responses to anything posted even when requesting them.  Perhaps I was foolish to create this in the first place.

Of ROMs and Emulators Part 1

There has been a lot of debate in various communities about the validity and legality of ROMs which are the “images” of a game captured from the microchips on the cartridges or disks that contains them (for the techies out there I know this is a gross simplification, however I’m attempting to make this understandable to everyone).   First you need to understand that the typical set up for a ROM is the following:  A computer running at least twice as fast as the system its emulating, an emulator program, and the ROM.   The question that we are looking at however isn’t the legality of having the information since you have that on any cartridge that you own as I’ll explain.  Instead the issue breaks down in to a few different parts relating to the entire system (emulator program and ROM) as a whole.

Just a quick hit...

With all nods due to Nodwick on this one, it looks like there may be a Dr. Who FTP MMO coming out soon.  The link which takes you to the web page noted on Nodwick.com gives a quick blurb about a newly announced MMO that indicates more information should be forth coming in the soon to be held GDC (Game Developers Conference).  It will be interesting to see how they take the good Doctor's version of our universe and spin it so that it makes an MMO... however I will say that there is plenty of room for them to do so.

Oh! Well I never! Was there ever...

Okay points for whom ever can actually name what the title of this post comes from.  Additional points if you can score me tickets to a show done by the creator... or even better yet, a good performance of Lés Misérables.  Okay since I'm giving out points for no reason even more points to anyone who can say what Lés Misérables means in English and who knows how to properly pronounce it.  And finally for the biggest brownie of all (ha ha! a change up!) who is the best singer IMHO of the lead role?

Okay now that were past the musical portion of this post shall we move on to more important things?  In the past I have mentioned how certain aspects of a video game are more crucial to game play.  I have also noted that its when they all come together that you get a truly classic game. To review IMHO there is a holy trinity for games:  Storyline and Characters,  Music and Sound, and Visual Appeal and Visual Distinction.

Of the three I haven't mentioned much a bout Visual Appeal.  Why?  The answer is more simple then you might think.  Generally speaking today games have become so graphics intensive, that visual appeal is almost a null point in "can they get it right".  However I will admit that companies get it wrong, or intentionally go out of their way to make their product appeal to different sections of the population.  A fine example would be any game with large amounts of blood, and gore in them.  I have no real interest in discovering what the entrails of a Gromgarian slug look like, much less what they appear to be when splattered on my screen... much less that of a human.

One aspect here that is vitally important however and often overlooked is the distinction of visual style that different production houses have.  This is true no matter what the production house is, be it Disney, Studio Ganiax, or Square Enix.  This is because the artists that they have are different from one another and thats a good thing.  If all games looked alike they would quickly grow boring, so think of that next time you complain about how a game looks.

Sound is important.  If all your creatures go "kree!" every time they attack then gamers will turn off the sound, movie goers will mute their TVs (or walk out of the theater), and book lovers will think your vocabulary is seriously lacking.  Sound ties in too with dialog, and that in turn ties in to the appeal of the world, the more immersive it is the more time people want to spend in your world.  However beware of the booby trap that is a lexicon.  If you have to spend more time looking up specialized terms, then participating in the media, then you've lost your audience.

Notice I say media.  This includes pictures, shows, movies, books, magazines, games,  you name it.  The rules I have here are finite and far reaching, they touch on every media known to man.  Each band has its own sound its own world their music belongs in, each panting is a window into that artist's view of the universe, and each book is a part of a person's soul and a look into how they see our world.

The final part of the trinity Storytelling and Characters seem simple.  Make an interesting story and make interesting characters and your golden right? Wrong.  If your characters are cold and people can't relate they can't get into your work, that's true, however more importantly people have to feel that your characters and storytelling are realistic.  If you don't know what it is, read here for what deus ex machina is... you'll thank me later.  This is arguably a huge problem in video games right now. 

Let me provide an example.  I suck at FPS titles like Halo, Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2, and pretty much anything with a gun and shooting mechanics... if I'm using a controller.  This means that I am relying on the storytelling to get me though games like COD MW2 when I play them so I notice holes in the story telling, like the enemy leader knowing your character is a double agent, when there's no indication of him doing so previously.  True this is a bad example on my part since I never played though much of the game, but to have him suddenly turn around and shoot my character dead left me pulled out of the game going "What happened?", in short I no longer was connecting with the game as it continued the story didn't work for me.

My point is simply this, every character needs balance, both in the story and in the character itself.  That's why you have a character who can do incredibly powerful magical spells they are usually physically weak.  I think the question of games getting easier isn't answered though the difficulty its through the use of save points and deus ex machina.  Games are training us to play them better and thus more skill is coming to the table when we do beat a game, just keep in check the bosses who can do impossible.

I hope this will be my last post about the trinity.  I'm sure you are all bored with it... and so as a way of saying thank you for sticking though my exposition I would invite you to a  little contest.  I would love to get a picture that I can use as a background for a home page that I am considering building for a website.  My general concept follows my name "Tech Magi" or "Blue Tech Magi".  For those of you who don't know  a magi is a magic user or wise man.
 
My initial idea is a technified version of the black mage from Final Fantasy, or a version of Vivi (from Final Fantasy 9) with some tech some how involved.  Of course you can't just rip off Square Enix ... I don't really want a lawsuit on my hands thanks.  Anyway once I create the website the winner's picture will appear as a background, with all submissions being linked or presented in an art section of the page.  Feel free and go wild.  I'm not sure when this will close but I do intend to build the website once I have a computer with the oomph to handle graphic applications without looking at me thinking I'm BSC (Bat Shit Crazy).  Submit your ideas though email or comments, and hopefully with in the next few months, I'll have a web presence, and you'll have a piece of art you can show off online, just remember that once submitted all pieces of art will belong to the website, unless linked though a web site, and the background will belong to the website.  Thanks everyone.

The Magic that is Music

I can’t count the number of times that I’ve played a Final Fantasy game, surely its in the hundreds if not thousands.  I know the stories, I know the characters, and unless it’s a new addition to the series I know what will happen before it happens.  Kingdom Heats in many ways is a fantasy style brawler type game.  I keep finding that I return to at least thinking about it from time to time, the same can be said for .//hack, Castlevania, and Mario Brothers.  As you can plainly see none of these games have much in common, in fact the original Super Mario Brothers is now over 25 years old, and still I think about it. 

Surely I wouldn’t write about things that have nothing in common, just for the sake of writing something.  That would defeat the purpose of this blog, and for anyone who knows me, or has read the title of this post you know it has something to do with music.  Cookies to everyone who guessed that it’s the music that keeps me returning to the game.  For as much as I might go on about creative elements, the story line, and unique characters, the music in a game can’t be denied its place.

Most of you have probably watched Disney’s Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin, or the Little Mermaid.  Take a moment and think about what these movies would be like if you removed not only the songs but the entire musical score.  The movies would lose vast amounts of their emotional impact, the characters likely would feel flat, and the story wouldn’t be anywhere nearly as satisfying.  I can honestly say I can’t imagine Beauty and the Beast without Angela Lansbury singing “Beauty and the Beast” in the dance hall, and there are times when I get lost in that magic, and have my breath taken away, if not tears drawn by it.

Already I can hear someone saying “But that’s just for chick flicks!” or some other poodoo (see link if you DON’T know what this is) like that.  I’ll give you some credit there, as movies such as Die Hard would still be impressive with the explosions, however the music in the back ground helps build the tension that makes those explosions so awe inspiring.  Don’t believe me?  Watch  the next action flick you see muted… or if you have a good graphics equalizer isolate just the voices… you’ll see what I mean, in Hollywood even the explosions go though soundboards.

What does this have to do with videogames?  Simple if you think about it, music touches us, heart, soul, mind and body.  It can make us happy, sad, anxious, eager, and even angry.  I has more power and more ability then just about any other media that I can think of, even visual medias. The right score (musically not points) not only makes a game, but sells the game.  The first time I heard “Simple and Clean” by Hikaru Utada I was simply put blown away and had to purchase the game Kingdom Hearts.  Heck just the fact that there are concerts for video games such as Video Games Live, and Play! show that more and more we are realizing the value in music.  And songs are powerful and emotion evoking.  So the next time you hear one of your favorite video game tunes you might head to the maker, and send a thank you note to the music department.