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Why Are There No Popular Ultima Online-Like MMOs? 480

Posted by Soulskill from the risk-is-not-our-business dept.
eldavojohn writes "I have a slightly older friend who played through the glory days of Ultima Online. Yes, their servers are still up and running, but he often waxes nostalgic about certain gameplay functions of UO that he misses. I must say that these aspects make me smile and wonder what it would be like to play in such a world — things like housing, thieving and looting that you don't see in the most popular massively multiplayer online games like World of Warcraft. So, I've followed him through a few games, including Darkfall and now Mortal Online. And these (seemingly European developed) games are constantly fading into obscurity and never catching hold. We constantly move from one to the next. Does anyone know of a popular three-dimensional game that has UO-like rules and gameplay? Perhaps one that UO players gravitated to after leaving UO? If you think that the very things that have been removed (housing and thieving would be two good topics) caused WoW to become the most popular MMO, why is that? Do UO rules not translate well to a true 3D environment? Are people incapable of planning for corpse looting? Are players really that inept that developers don't want to leave us in control of risk analysis? I'm familiar with the Bartle Test but if anyone could point me to more resources as to why Killer-oriented games have faded out of popularity, I'd be interested."
Piracy

Sony Joins the Offensive Against Pre-Owned Games 461

Posted by Soulskill from the saddle-up dept.
BanjoTed writes "In a move to counter sales of pre-owned games, EA recently revealed DLC perks for those who buy new copies of Mass Effect 2 and Battlefield: Bad Company 2. Now, PlayStation platform holder Sony has jumped on the bandwagon with similar plans for the PSP's SOCOM: Fireteam Bravo 3. '[Players] will need to register their game online before they are able to access the multiplayer component of the title. UMD copies will use a redeemable code while the digital version will authenticate automatically in the background. Furthermore ... anyone buying a pre-owned copy of the game will be forced to cough up $20 to obtain a code to play online."
Cellphones

Owners Smash iPhones To Get Upgrades, Says Insurance Company 406

Posted by timothy from the dog-ate-it dept.
markass530 writes "An iPhone insurance carrier says that four in six claims are suspicious, and is worse when a new model appears on the market. 'Supercover Insurance is alleging that many iPhone owners are deliberately smashing their devices and filing false claims in order to upgrade to the latest model. The gadget insurance company told Sky News Sunday that it saw a 50-percent rise in claims during the month Apple launched the latest version, the iPhone 3GS.'"
PC Games (Games)

Star Guard — an Old-School Platformer Done Right 107

Posted by Soulskill from the 39-deaths-i-am-terrible dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Rock, Paper, Shotgun points out a new game called Star Guard, a Flash-based platformer for Mac and PC that's a throwback to the early days of computer gaming, yet still entertaining. They describe it thus: 'Its greatest strength, to my mind, is throwing out the old-school traditions of difficulty. It does certainly get tricky, requiring the platformer standbys of carefully timed jumps and learning enemy patterns — there's something of a Metroid vibe to it. But you don't get punished for failing to meet one of its challenges — you're just plunged a few feet back to most recent checkpoint, and carry on. Lives are not finite, but the small mound of green pixels that mark your corpses are a maudlin testament to your ineptitude. However, death is useful — I ritually found myself sending in a suicide spaceman, taking out an enemy or a mine so that the path was clear for my next go. ... However, it doesn't leave people who pride themselves on their gaming skill, and demand their games to be hard, out in the cold. At the end of each level, your score alters dramatically depending on how many times you died.'"

Comment Well, the problem lies in the fact... (Score 0) 432

by FragInc (#28833047) Attached to: Security Certificate Warnings Don't Work
that very few websites implement security certificates correctly and keep them up-to-date. Many have signed certs for their site but it is old and subsequently gets flagged. No one is ever going to actually pay attention to the security certs until they are implemented correctly across the board... ya, like that's going to happen! :-/

Comment Switched... Again! (Score 0) 697

by FragInc (#17487778) Attached to: Mac OS X Versus Windows Vista
I used Windows at the start of my personal computer days (1994) until I was introduced to Slackware. I then started to dabble in Linux (1995) but only occasionally due to the fact that it was quite young and didn't have much to offer in the way of use to me at the time. I knew of the Mac platform but it was pre-OS X and I wasn't interested in it at all. Then came OS X... a friend of mine, knowing that I liked Linux, re-introduced me to the Mac side of the computer world which was now OS X (2003) and I knew right off that it was for me. I now use all three OS's but I will *not* make the Vista transition... XP is my last version of Windows that will run on my PC's. I will continue to run OS X, SUSE and Slackware with a Windows XP machine for that odd occasion of needing something that just isn't offered on the other platforms. Far less headaches that way and I won't have to buy new keyboards all the time!

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