I am going to copy Michael over at MMOG Nation

I have a bunch of buddy keys for Age of Conan, and everyone I know who might have wanted to play already is.

Let me know if you want one in the comments, or shoot me an email. I think I have about five, so there are plenty to go around.

Just like Michael I received that email from Funcom saying my buddy codes are ready to be used.  As Michael said above,  Send me a message and it’s yours.

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I don’t know what to do.  I have been trying to sleep for about the last 3 hours and I can’t get the chatter out of my head.

It is amazing how quickly the mind will jump from idea to idea vividly pushing the thoughts deeper and deeper into your brain just to come back up bigger and more intense.  I don’t usually have this issue,  last time I had this issue was when I had my first interview at Electronic Arts about 5 years ago.  Since then sleeping has been smooth sailing… Well kind of.  I sort of like to stay awake until I will fall asleep just before my head hits the pillow.

My wife says that it is better for me to either talk about the brain chatter, or write about it.  But some of my ideas could easily be borrowed, or wouldn’t make sense to anyone other then myself. 

Another thing I tried to do the last time I got out of bed was check out a couple blogs.  Which only made it worse.  People talking about skill based systems over a levelling system at CSG, the post over at Brokentoys with the nifty graph of the MMO history to old school UO players.  Then there is potshot talking about EVE.  Always like reading about EVE in fact got into an argument about EVE vs WoW tonight at the bar.  It was fun.

There is so much to read, so much I want to contribute but even without a job, I don’t have the time.  And then what happens?  I can’t sleep.

Time for me to give it another shot.

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As I have said twice.  Once in just over a year ago (Rumor: Big Announcement This Week.) I was correct you can check out the full article at Joystiq.

Hells ya!

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After a bumpy start for anyone outside of the USA the first Act of Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog is available.  You can check it out HERE.

This free TV quality web short starts off with Dr. Horrible’s (Neal Patrick Harris) answering emails to his blog by not so nice people which quickly turns into stalker musical number about Penny (Felicia Day).

Horrible attempts to do his evil deed and is stopped by a singing Captain Hammer (Nathan Fillion). 

This is a musical so you have been warned but its good and I look forward to the next 26 minutes of it in acts two and three later this week.

And now for a dancing Mal.

Cheers.

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"A LETTER FROM JOSS WHEDON
Dear Friends,
At last the time has come to reveal to you our Master Plan. BEWARE! Those with weak hearts should log off lest they be terrified by the twisted genius of our schemes! Also pregnant women and the elderly should consider reading only certain sentences. Do not mix with other blogs. Do not operate heavy machinery while reading this blog. You must be this tall to read. ‘Kay?

It is time for us to change the face of Show Business as we know it. You know the old adage, “It’s Show Business – not Show Friends”? Well now it’s Show Friends. We did that. To Show Business. To show Show Business we mean business. (Also, there are now other businesses like it.)
ONE WEEK ONLY! AN INTERNET MINISERIES EVENT!

"Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog" will be streamed, LIVE (that part’s not true), FREE (sadly, that part is) right on Drhorrible.com, in mid-July. Specifically:
ACT ONE (Wheee!) will go up Tuesday July 15th.
ACT TWO (OMG!) will go up Thursday July 17th.
ACT THREE (Denouement!) will go up Saturday July 19th."

This is going to be sweet.  In this trailer I see three very memorable faces.  Obviously Neal Patrick Harris.  Then I see Mel from Fire Fly also known as Nathan Fillion and then the female of the show seems to be Codex from the web show The Guild also known as Felicia Day.  This could be really cool.

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  So I was reading an article today on MCVUK where EA Marketing Manager Claire Ridley said:

“We anticipate Spore to have the same ‘long tail’ success as The Sims. Just like The Sims, Spore is going to be fueled by user created content,”

I guess I can see that.  Spore, what an interesting saga that game has had.  I loved the idea of it when it was announced and when Will Wright started showing demos of the game.  Even recently bought the $10 creature creator. It’s fine.

But this is where I think there might be a problem. This game was supposed to come out so long ago that I think many people might be past the hype at this point. They better deliver a solid game if they really want the game to sell.  The one thing about The Sims that made it sell so well was the ‘person’ factor.  House wives felt connected to their characters that they made in The Sims.  I know my wife loves playing with the money cheats and progressing her main avatar.  But I showed her the Spore Creature creator the day it came out.  She was interested for about 3 minutes.  I even gave her a quick tutorial about it and showed her the Sporepedia and still she said she will give it a shot once it came out but she is still connected to her Sims characters.

So does anyone else out there think there might be an issue at this point of Spore peaking past its hype bubble?  Or am I talking out of my ass?

Oh ya, when I get to back up some stuff from my old work computer next week I shall post a pick of my safe for work creature.

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"You have five to ten minutes to pack your things."

That is what I heard last Wednesday morning.  A day that looked to be a good day.

Myself and many other people were told then and there that we have lost our jobs and as of that moment we are now on the hunt for new ones.  It’s always interesting to see how people take news like that.  Seeing that we went through this in April with a large group being let go then we couldn’t really say we didn’t see this coming.  Maybe no so fast but it happened. 

So I am no longer a member of the Foundation 9 family.  What a shame.  I see good things happening with Foundation 9.  Especially with Double Helix down in Irvine.  You know that studios that were once known as The Collective and Shiny. 

At the end of the day it wasn’t actually a bad day.  Bunch of us decided to announce to the studio "Drinks at the Cats Meow" like always when something happens where we get to go drink at 11am.  So we proceeded there.  I hopped onto MSN on my MotoQ and sent out some messages to ex employees letting them know the news that the studio was shutting down, and that we were all essentially fired. We drank, there were some people who were sad but a majority of people were happy.  I would have liked to finish working on the game I have put a year and a half into but their call not mine.

People started to leave the Cats Meow so I decided it was time to shift the drinking over to Soho’s in Yaletown.  Nice little billiards that generally takes care of us.  Sending out a few text messages and MSNs by the end of the night there was easily 50 people that had shown up at one point or another.  It was awesome to see all those faces of the people who were let go in April or who quit before or after the April lay offs.

News traveled fast to all the different studios across the city that all this talent was out of a job and people will be looking for new jobs.  Within 48 hours of the studio "shutting down" we all had invites to Slant6 Games for some coffee and pastries.  It was nice to finally see the office of our neighbors as they are located only 2 blocks away from us. Later that day I get a invite to a EA Mixer that actually took place last night,  It was awesome to see the buildings that were under construction when I worked  at EAC (Burnaby) being complete and furnished.  Reminded me a bit of EA Redwood Shores (SanFran).  There were a lot of recruiters and some people who are higher in some of the disciplines that don’t relate to me so I was basically there for the shrimp and beer, but at least I got an invite to Cake and Beer Fridays at EA Blackbox(Downtown Vancouver).

So now the first week since I have had no job is over.  I sent my resume to a couple studios hoping to make that jump out of my current role as Lead QA Tester to Design and for the first time in a long time it actually looks like EA might be the place for me to do that.  With EA I could go multiple routes.  I could go QA Manager at EA but I don’t really want to, I could probably go production because of the managerial aspect of my previous job or I could go design as no one can really be taught how to be creative. 

So the hunt has begun.  Shall keep you posted.

-Cheers

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Like no one saw that coming.  You can click the pic above to go straight to the D3 site. 

More about the site and impressions from videos, pictures and info on the site after I wake up.

Cheers.

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Every now and again I need take a long deep breath, stare out the window.  Not go outside because of this yellow ball in the sky that causes my pale skin to burn.  But to get to the point I just need do what I need to do to clear my head.  The reason this happens is because of news I read on the Internet concerning video games and more specifically MMO’s.

For the first time since Age of Conan has come out I have finally started asking the questions “Why would they do that?” and “Why did they do it that way and not this way?”.  I will sit here at my desk perplexed with the decisions made by Funcom. 

At this point in time we are at the largest peak of potential MMO players.  With World of WarCraft hitting the 10million mark, Lineage having it’s large numbers, Lord of the Rings Online and EverQuest 2 all in that range of a “Large scale” MMO. 

Why would they put out faulty software? Why would they allow the bugs into the retail release that they did?  Why didn’t they delay the game one more time to I don’t know maybe fill the content into the game for the last 30 levels? 

I understand there is a business to be run, and I am sure at this point in time there was a lot of publisher pressure to get the game onto the shelves now, before summer break to get all the kids (who aren’t supposed to be playing this game) addicted and paying for the title.  The problem is we are also at the most saturated state on the internet of people blogging, podcasting, twittering, message boarding, newsgrouping that we have ever been.  News travels quickly. So not putting that extra time into the game now to make the game good before WarHammer Online comes out makes no sense to me.  You got to spend money to make money and if it meant three more months of production, and beta testing the client these issues that are causing people to quit in droves might not happen. 

Prime example of putting broken features into the game is one of the latest ones.  Siege Keeps have been implemented into the game.  So far I believe there has been 3 battles on Deathwhisper. The guilds on that server are pretty hard into the PVP aspects of the game and also look for the issues that might give them an advantage.  Does QA not do this when a new feature is implemented?  I pay my monthly fee for a service, and I know there will be bugs at the beginning of the game.  But for every 1 step forward it seems Age of Conan goes 2 maybe 3 steps back. 

Argh, why couldn’t this game be done nicely?  Maybe in two or three months when the majority of those “1 million copies sold” have cancelled their accounts Funcom will wake up and see that they might have screwed up and might hire some more QA staff to test the patches.

-Tom

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