The 8 Billion Dollar ipod

I do not usually watch things like this but this time I made random exception and ...

Westfront PC The Trials of Guilder

While cleaning out some old USB sticks I found one where I backed up all my 3 inch floppies before throwing out the last computer that had drive to run them.

Among tons of things I forgot about, there is a copy of one of the first games I owned, Westfront PC The Trials of Guilder.

To run it on my computer today I have to use DOSBox.

I still remember where I got stuck in it. Yeah, I never beat it. I was supposed to 'appease the wolf'. Nobody on any of BBS's I frequented had a clue what this game was, nor how to appease the wolf, there was no place to look it up, so I set it aside and forgot all about it for all these years.

I Googled the name of the game to find how to appease the wolf, or at least read a summary of what actually happens in the game, and found this page:

http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=yurg8ah4pdcapc5g

This game is now in public domain (used to be shareware). You can download it at that link for free.

Edit: I just found out that Paul Allen Panks, the creator of Westfront PC The Trials of Guilder died back in 2009, 5 years ago. More specifically I found out about it by reading this:
http://ascii.textfiles.com/archives/2063

I was not aware of anything he said/did other than this one game. And as it seems that there were lot of people who disliked him and as he is not around to defend himself, I feel need to add this here as well. I cannot post on that page as it does not seem to have a comment box any more, but I can clone post that I wholeheartedly agree with that somebody else posted and that reflects how I feel about it today:

Thank you Paul.

BEST MMO IDEA EVER (I THOUGHT OF IT FIRST THO)

While back I was thinking how great it would be to play MMO that actually replica of Earth, but perhaps in Fallout-like setting, or Shadowrun. I prefer Shadowrun setting, as much as recent Shadowrun games butchered it, but Fallout setting would be far easier to manage.

Years went by, and as I am not game developer but a gamer, nothing came of that MMO idea. Until now.

Randomly today I  chanced upon these guys:
http://rerollgame.com/

If they make it, it will be like dream come true for anybody into this type of thing.

First part is set for release at some point mid next year (2015), and as Elder Scrolls Online just made me lose hope in gaming companies actually producing what they promise, I'll defer my judgement on this until I see what they wind up creating.

The IDEA of it tho, is where gaming companies should be aiming. Create worlds, not dozen crappy, empty zones. Populate those worlds with players, not with stupid AI. And then let me PK all those carebears and noobs in that world without repercussion, and let them try to do the same to me.

ESO going F2P or shutting off servers

Its a prediction.

And I'd like to say, before anything else, that anybody who purchased Elder Scrolls Online is financing regurgitated garbage that these wannabe developers are throwing out. You should be ashamed! Crap like ESO should be denied support, people who got to make decisions which resulted in failure and waste of resourced should be blacklisted and never be left in charge of anything again. By being complacent you are getting exactly what you deserve: garbage.

Anybody that knows me knows that finances are a non issue for me. I buy several games each month and whether game has cash shop or subscription, or both, if I like it, I'll support it.

But when I play MMO, it is not just about me and my own likes and dislikes. MMO's are also about community and population. You cannot do 60 man raid if there are only 40 people playing on your entire server at any one time.

That is why Warhammer Online failed. I actually got two free copies from two different friends who each preordered extra copy because they wanted me in their guilds. They were on different servers so I joined both as I was touched by the gestures. At first it was ok, but then I got to mid-range levels and most quests seemed to be designed for groups, but there were no groups. I tend not to play during primetime. Solidly populated MMO has people around 24/7, average one just has people during 4-6 busy hours. I guess if I was not there to play with friends I could have switched to different timezone servers, like Oceanic ones, where their primetime would be dead hours when I have free time. When population starts to dwindle, its a ripple effect, it does not get better without outside influence, such as promotion, new xpac, etc. Whoever was making final decisions for WAR was simply incompetent as far as promoting and running a MMO goes. So many people on WoW servers saw WAR as WoW Killer that WAR should have succeeded by default.

ORIGIN is giving away FREE GAMES

Yeah. Really free.

They are starting with Dead Space, available for free until May 8th 2014:
https://www.origin.com/en-us/store/on-the-house-ANW.html

I already have it, without Origin, so this is not incentive enough for me to get Origin just yet. After all, I even use cracks on my legally purchased Steam games just to avoid having Steam on, so last thing I want to do is install yet another unneeded DRM piece of crapware that might interfere with something else.

I much preferred when I could just buy the game in store and not need to activate it online.  All they are doing with all this online DRM is making people like me use cracks so that we can enjoy our legally purchased games.

It just makes no sense that pirated products give you less headache than buying directly from manufacturer.

Price of Progress: In Support of Piracy

If internet was decade and a half ago as it was today, I do not think my trip would have been as fun.

I remember using popup blockers and deciding on what are morally correct ways to serve ads to my visitors (for example, I never used popups nor exit crap that tries to make last minute sale). But I look at what I run today and I could not possibly advise anybody not to do same and run Malwarebytes, AdblockPlus, Noscript, ...

When I started out I think I was getting infected by random virus every week. In last decade I have not had a single infection. I do however see 'blocked' by Malwarebytes and Avast about three times an hour.

I also remember what it was like to contact small game developer with an issue, or talk to sysop at random BBS, before there was internet. And how much more polite interactions were. How much higher value individual customer had when getting product to individual customer was harder.

So with progress, and ease of getting in touch, price was human decency.