Sunday 5 May 2002

Pic of the day: Actually it was a beautiful spring day in real life too, but in real life you are advised not to roleplay a 50 cm high woman with an enchanted shield and a temper.

Games update

OK, I wrote too much yesterday. Not as in "Oh no, I've said too much" but as in "I should give my hand more rest".

No complex issues today, just a quick update on some of my favorite games.

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Dark Age of Camelot seems to be doing well enough. They have only added 1 server (a medieval roleplay server) in America since I joined in December, so the era of explosive growth is over. Then again, there are at least 6 European servers now; I guess those have taken some people off the original servers. The extreme lag on the European servers is gone too. Still, I prefer the American servers. Force of habit, probably. That, and they get the new upgrades earlier.

Yes, the game is expanding all the time. New spells, new combat styles, new quests, new monsters, new items, new dungeons. The game is expanding, and at such a speed that the casual player may never catch up. It seems the first cohort of dedicated fans have now reached the fabled Level 50, the highest possible level in the game. To feed these people, a new layer of advanced abilities are now being create. But these can not be bought with experience points, only realm points. These are won by fighting in the realm wars. (The game makes murder impossible but encourages war - a distinction that I'm worried may seep into young and naive players.)

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City of Heroes, the massive multiplayer superhero game, is most certainly not finished this summer. There is no sign of a massive beta, and in fact they just recently announced a decision to not implement capes or wings in the game. This is such a basic design choice that I doubt the game is even in alpha. I suspect the screenshots and the small movie are mostly artwork, not made with the actual game engine. Then again, I have occasionally been wrong before! ^-^

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Morrowind, the sequel to Daggerfall from Bethesda Softworks, is just out. Unlike the two games mentioned above, this is unabashedly single player. Given Bethsoft's notoriety for releasing really buggy games (and patching them later), I would be in no hurry even if my wrist could handle it. Which it can't.

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The wrist also limits my activities in SimCountry. I am still amused by the similarities between Latium Secundum and my native Norway. As the wages keep rising, manufacturing is going out of business while service remains. I am slightly surprised that this game managed to make that transition. (There is still some unemployment, but mainly because the default education priorities created a lot of low-level managers. After I cut funding for that in half, things are slowly normalizing.)

The rapidly rising wages may wreak havoc on much of the production, but it makes for great satisfaction in the populace, adding to the already high productivity. (I have invested heavily in productivity upgrades for the service industries, in order to compensate for the lack of workers.) I'm still running a nice budget surplus, but with almost all the economy in services and high-tech services my country has become very vulnerable to business cycles. Right now there is a huge world surplus in services, so prices are bound to come down.

Anyway, a quite realistic and instructive game, highly recommended for those with an interest in economics. Or politics, which is economics with weapons.

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What I could need is a vacation. By sheer coincidence, The Sims: Vacation expansion pack is being distributed as I speak. It is a bit later here in Norway, as usual. Not that I have the wrist to play it when it comes. But some day ... ? And it is cheaper than a real vacation.