New Attitude for January 4, 2008

Lets start off this weeks column with some words from the head honco himself, the main man, the sultan of Sony – John “Smed” Smedley.

Read on…

In the News…Ladies and Gentleman, the president (of SOE)

Lets start off this weeks column with some words from the head honco himself, the main man, the sultan of Sony – John “Smed” Smedley. Keep in mind that the source of this particular news item is EQ2 Flames. While it is indeed likely that John Smedley might read EQ2 Flames, keep in mind that there is a reason for the “flames” part of the name. And so, ladies and gentlemen, I give you the president (of SoE): “I’ve been a regular lurker on this site for a while but I wanted to step in here and dispel something that’s just plain not true - I don’t have my name highlighted here, but anyone that doubts it’s me can email me at jsmedley@soe.sony.com and I’ll happily reply. 

We aren’t going to be allowing RMT in any way, shape or form on the non-exchange enabled EQ II servers. Period. End of statement. If we catch people, we ban them and have been for a long time now. The truth of the matter is it’s very difficult to combat them, but we have people at SOE who fight the good fight each and every day. In the near future you’re going to see us becoming a lot more public about this then we ever have been. I think we’ve done a bad job at communicating just how seriously we take this fight.

We’re interested in working with LiveGamer because they are unique in the RMT world due to the fact that they are pledging (and are putting technology behind it) to not buy from farmers. Farmers are the bane of our existence at SOE. They cause us endless amounts of grief and do real financial damage in a meaningful way.

What do I mean by that?

Many of them use stolen credit cards, obtained by unsuspecting users who give them credit card #’s to purchase in-game gold. I’m not saying all of the RMT shops out there use stolen credit cards, but a LOT of them do. Your credit card is absolutely not safe in their hands.

In addition we recieve large scale (over $500k so far) fines for chargebacks that these scumbag farmers routinely do. They purchase a new account.. use it for a month and then call the credit card company to say “I never paid for this”. Over time, as the # of these incidents rise we get fined by the credit card companies. And it’s not just us, other large MMO companies are seeing exactly the same problem.

In any event, I wanted to stop in and at least set the record straight - you aren’t going to be seeing RMT allowed on the non-exchange enabled servers.” - John Smedley on EQ2 Flames

The Florida States Attorney’s office agrees…

It appears that the Florida States Attorneys office agrees with Mr. Smedley.  It appears that the “Florida Attorney General’s Office of Economic Crimes issued an investigative subpoena for records to IGE U.S., a.k.a. Affinity Media” as reported by www.igeclassaction.com.  The subpoena is reported to have been issued “pursuant to the Florida Deceptive and Unfair Trade Practices Act in the course of an official investigation”.  For those of you who are unaware, IGE is, by there own estimation at least, the worlds largest seller of virtual in game currency.  More about this issue and Mr. Smedley’s comments in “Gnomercee, no prisoners”

Scott Hartsman we hardly knew ye…

 Last month we bid goodbye to Scott Hartsman, Senior Producer for EQ2.  Before becoming a producer he was a technical director.  For those of you who may be interested in an interview with Mr. Hartsman from back in 2004 when he was a technical director it can be found here  at gamespy.com.  He was on the team that brought us “highly detailed, photorealistic characters and environments” that were “bleeding edge”. As for me, I will remember him (like he’s dead right?) as the producer that brought us the Echoes of Faydwer – the expansion with the “oh wow” look that brought me back to Everquest after playing EQ1 before there was an EQ2.  Scott  Hartsman has a blog site entitled “Scott Hartsman – Off the Record” that can be found at hartsman.com.  Here is an excerpt from his letter entitled “A new beginning” where he bid goodbye to us all.  The entire letter can be read here. “I’ve never been a fan of saying goodbye, but it’s time. Today is my last day here at SOE.In addition, I’d like to say thank you. Thank you all for playing in these worlds that I’ve had the chance to touch over the past years.  Thank you for your boundless dedication and passion to what it is that we’ve all created here. To many of you, thank you for your friendship. A lot of you have been nothing short of an extended family over the past years.I will miss you all.” – Scott Hartsman

Substituting for Mr. Hartsman…

Taking over for Mr. Hartsman is Bruce “Froech” Ferguson, who inherited the nonsense about transferring a guild from the test realms to the live realms right off the bat. For those of you not aware of this situation you can take a look at my first column. I said it then I will say it now – “So, if SOE has found a band of players who are actually willing to go out and test the game, and they choose to reward those players I say “bravo!”

Links… 

Terra Nova is one site you may be interested if, like me, you are interested in virtual worlds outside Norrath. You can find there web site here. They describe themselves as “weblog about virtual worlds - Virtual Worlds are also known as synthetics worlds, MMOs, MMORPGs, Social Worlds, MUDs, MOOs, and MUSHes.” Before we run out of alphabet to make acronyms with I will simply say they sometimes feature the works by people such as Richard Bartle. Richard Bartle – no,not  Bartle of Bartle and James fame.  This Bartle is the author, industry pioneer, and games researcher who wrote such books as “Designing Virtual Worlds.” 

 I told you that to tell you this… 

Scott Hartsman may be gone from SOE but he is not gone altogether. Apparently he still intends to keep his blog going at www.hartsman.com.  His most recent entry, entitled “Why Fantasy (I’d love to be wrong) that you can find here. This particular blog entry is written in answer to a question Richard Bartle recently posed on Terra Nova, that being “Why is fantasy the dominant mmo genre?”Aside from the existence of such fantasy elements as provided by Tolkein and Dungeons and Dragons, Scott Hartsman’s reason goes like this: He believes that “the early memories that first woke your imagination are sticky beyond ever being dislodged.”  Those memories, he goes on to say, are associated with fantasy elements of culture. Why would he like to be wrong? Because he feels that this aspect of our natures limits the development of the MMO genre.  I will agree with one thing – he says that while he enjoys science fiction genre mmos, they “take effort to get lost in.” I couldn’t agree more.

Great Moments in Gaming…got to collect them all.

The first stop this week is in the home of Decim on the Najena Server. The picture above was taken as the two of us enjoyed her rooftop garden.  Yes, she made all of it, from the griffon fountain right down to the flowers -her talent shows. You should see the rest of the house, or perhaps we should see one of the houses that you have seen. Let us know.

Cross Roads…

This week we will take a look at a place called Bloodskull Valley. On our way there, however, we will stop at the Cross Roads (seen at right). You can’t miss it – its right smack dab in the middle of the common lands.  If you are of the evil persuasion you can walk right in. If you are one of the good folk that wanders around Qeynos you will have to sneak in. If you are on a pvp server you will likely have to fight your way in. Just inside the building, step through the doorway and then stop and turn around…

As you see on the picture above you will see a sword and shield. Click on the shield and you will get a book called “Orc Society”  This book is part of a series called “Lore and Legend” – you will find them in various places throughout Norrath.  The quest will ask you to collect various parts of orcs. Once you have completed the quest you will get to keep the book which you can read and place in your house, a trophy to hang on your wall (a bow in this case) and a spell that will let you womp orcs a good one – very useful when you go to places like Zek.

Welcome to Bloodskull Valley…

 The entrance to the valley is located in the South East corner of the Command Lands at waypoint -49,-44,978 at the end of a dead end trail.  In my case I just happened upon it quite by accident and wondered “what does this door do?”  I opened it and there inside was a quest giver named Terithal to greet me.  He gave me the quest “Terithal’s revenge”. Note that there are more than one instances to this valley. The one we are talking about here is called “ Bloodskull Valley: excavation site”.

There are several quests to this first introduction to Bloodskull Valley. The first of them involves burning 6 war machines that are scattered throughout the zone. To do this you will need to gather a torch that is located along a broken wall over which you must pass to reach the rest of the valley.

Once you have burned them you will have to go to the arena – a large wooden enclosure in the far corner of the valley.  Inside you will find a couple of trogolodyte berserkers hanging about. Kill them and four troglodyte chosen will take there place. Kill them and the troglodyte champion will take their place.  The final step is to kill the troglodyte champion.

The arena… 

The majority of the orcs in the valley where in the level 15 range.  As you go through the valley completing the quest don’t you will the quest items you need for “Orc Society” will drop. In my case I had to by the orc spine when I got back for a silver or two. The items for the house are nice – the spell is better.

Have Mercy…

Whether it is a matter of you having mercy on me or me having mercy on you, the column has reached such a length this time that I have decided to break it out in to two parts. The last section - “Gnomercee, no prisoners” will appear tommorow. This will also give me some time to give greater attention to the news that John Smedley gave the community earlier. Does that make me a John Smedley fan girl? Well, I guess it does.

Until tomorrow, see you online.

Julie Whitefeather