Category Archives: Links of Others

Links to other places.

Garriott… innn… SPAAAACCE!!

We have blast-off. The first ever games designer… in spaaace… etc.

No, the date wasn’t ringed on my calendar. I vaguely remember being told he was going up in mid-October, but I never paid much attention to the exact date even at NCsoft, so thanks BBC. I hope he has a safe and successful flight, and that he feels it’s worth the THIRTY MILLION DOLLARS (approximately) that he paid for the privilege.

That’s a heck of a lot of money to follow in Dad’s footsteps. If he wanted to save money, he could have gone Virgin Galactic, who’ll be charging a lot less - but then Richard’s going to be up for ten days, not ten minutes.

In case you’re wondering, that eye-popping budget was never bandied around much at NCsoft when I was there - but not for the reason you might be thinking. See, it’s all Richard’s money. (Nope. I didn’t think Ultima was that big either.) Not a penny came from NCsoft. Which is good. Because otherwise right now you’d probably be wondering just what else that cash could have been spent on.

Instead of just thinking: “So how is this supposed to help Tabula Rasa, exactly?”

Limited Edition 3 of… a lot

Spent a very enjoyable couple of hours over the weekend blabbing about comic books, movies, games and so on with John and Matt for Limited Edition, episode 3.

Somehow John managed to cut our two hours of chat down into a relatively svelte 90 minutes, so if you fancy a listen head on over to the Limited Edition site for more info, and to download.

Lots of work related stuff happening right now - both in my actual work and in potential, possible work. When/if any of it breaks I’ll let you know.

In the interim, I’ll try to come up with a few more things to say around here, but honestly, life’s keepin’ me busy….

Limited Edition… featuring me

(I almost wrote the subject line ‘Wearing Yellow Spandex’ but I get enough random weird search queries as it is…)

Limited Edition, the new podcast from John ‘Shuttler’ Nicholson, ex-host of TabulaCast, and his partner in crime Matt, has moved on to Episode 2 - and said episode has a brand new voice in the mix, namely me! Yes, after hearing episode one of the show I thought I could help these ‘babes in the wood’ on the subject of comics and superhero-type stuff, so I volunteered my services.

Did I completely take over? Are they regretting ever asking me to appear? Did I vent my spleen on the subject of NCsoft? Even worse, did I spill precious secrets about Issue 13??? Read More »

Winnerrrrrrr!

I’m reliably informed that Onlinewelten - one of the biggest German fansites out there - awarded NCsoft and specifically Aion: The Tower of Eternity ‘Best Stand of GC‘, which legitimately allows me to run this pic:

Onlinewelten Best Stand Award

Woo! We rule! Etc etc. Here’s what they had to say about us: Read More »

Early PAX impressions of Aion: good

While it’s not a full-fledged preview, Shawn Schuster over at Massively gave special mention to Aion’s presence at PAX, which is holding its own against ‘MMOs With Three-Letter-Acronyms That Begin With W’:

With the NCsoft booth occupying some precious real estate in the middle of the exhibition floor, the Aion side of that booth faced the entrance, which worked well in their favor. Even the buzz around the booth and from passersby seemed very positive during the first ever public hands-on of this fantasy/flight MMO.

(Although of course, technically, PAX is hosting the first ever US-based public hands-on - as we debuted Aion at Games Convention.)

Let’s hope players like what they see (and play), eh?

Some Aion and GC-related links

A few links ‘n’ things I thought you might be interested in….

Couple of Aion previews

Pre-Leipzig we gave an exclusive Aion preview to PCGZine, who visited the office and got loads of ’stuff’ from us that they’ve put together into a six-page preview. In case you didn’t know, they’re a PDF-based online magazine, so you don’t even have to go to the shops to read it.

Anyway, you can grab the PDF file right here and have a peruse. It’s supposed to be ‘interactive’ with rollover videos and stuff, which might work in Acrobat, but I’ll tell you right now doesn’t work on a Mac.

If you’d prefer a preview that isn’t in PDF format, you might enjoy this look at Aion from The Escapist, who aren’t generally known for their hyperbole. They like what they saw at the recent press preview in San Francisco, which is all good news.

The things fans do…

We spent a lot of our time during GC on our feet, but we never made the commitment to distance that a few of our more dedicated Aion fansites did. A number of them banded together to basically walk the length and breadth of Leipzig (as in, the town) and get pictures of every Aion billboard we had there.

Apart from being proof that yeah, we spent a bit of money on the game’s promotion, it also proves undeniably that our fans are mad, crazy people who we love to bits. See the photographic proof of this true ‘Quest for GC’ in this Flickr set.

While we’re talking about “things our fans do for us”, here are two photos with things that make me happy:

Martin and Shark Tank

Yep, that’ll be Martin with a shark tank, as presented to him by a fan during the show. (Our Marketing Manager, Mirko, is on the right.) That’ll be a direct reference to my dialogue, then….

Martin and Shark Tee

Last but not least - AionSource’s t-shirt of GC, featuring fan art based on The Shark, as modelled by Martin, constructed by Chris, and conceived by me in Episode 6.

Fan-made merch. Love it.

Four - no, five new podcasts

In the heady rush of content from Games Convention, you may have missed that we slung out four new episodes of the Official NCE podcast. All of them were recorded live off stage, so you’ll find that there’s German and English in there (translations from the crowd to the stage, and then back).

As well as myself yabbering about getting into games, we also have the Aion community team, Izzy and Mike from ArenaNet and Tom Potter from Destination Games to listen to. Pretty good line-up really. You can listen to all four of ‘em online, subscribe, get the MP3s etc all right here.

Credit goes out to Chris for editing these at real short notice.

I said five podcasts though… and the fifth is a new kid on the block. John AKA Shuttler of TabulaCast fame, along with his co-host Matt, have moved on from talking about Tabula Rasa to talking about everything superhero - whether it’s comics, movies or indeed City of Heroes. I expect we gave ‘em something to talk about yesterday.

Anyway their new ‘cast is called Limited Edition, although confusingly the site’s at yellowspandex.com (and yes, I get the reference). You can grab episode 1 right here, and subscribe through the usual methods.

Official City of Heroes Facebook Page…

… is now live, courtesy of our friends in the US. Go and declare yourself a Fan.

Don’t forget, there are a few other official Pages for our games on Facebook, which I listed way back in June.

Win a Neil Edwards-painted PC!

First it was Andrew Wildman’s pen caressing the curves (er… okay, flat panels) of a custom-built City of Heroes styled PC.

Now it’s Neil Edwards’ turn, who picked up his paint brushes to create a one of a kind PC case featuring Statesman and Ghost Widow.

Where can you win it? In The Sun, of course - that super soaraway superpowered paper of record.

Click here to go enter the competition and win!!

Fairway Solitaire… and the power of Penny Arcade

I’ve known about the ‘power of Penny Arcade’ for years now - in fact, I’ve watched it grow. The ‘power’ in case you were wondering, is basically their ability to get a mass of consumers to go after one thing; usually a game. Obviously, that’s a power often wielded to get people to buy their own stuff (and why not) but often it’s used to push people towards products they might not have otherwise heard about.

When it’s aimed towards a web site, often The Power can crush web servers that are unprepared. People used to talk about ‘getting slashdotted’ (ie, getting linked to by Slashdot - or just /. if you’re an ubernerd), and then ‘Boing-Boinged’ but when you get hit by Penny Arcade, you get wanged. (Their term.) Read More »

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