Entertainment – Page 13

June 22, 2012

Diablo III And The Mysterious Case Of Restricting Content

Blizzard, in their infinite wisdom, have decided to restrict people who buy the digital version of Diablo III from unlocking full game content for up to seventy two hours. Let’s just look at this again, someone buys the game and then can’t play the game properly. This is a shocking and appalling way of going about business.

Players are unable to get past Act 1 or level 13 until the account restrictions are lifted, these are unintended consequences of the account restrictions according to Rock, Paper, Shotgun. The intended consequences are:

No public game access for unverified digital purchasers.
No auction house access (real-money or gold) for unverified digital purchasers.
Unverified digital purchasers cannot trade items or drop items for other players to receive.
Unverified digital purchasers are not able to chat in any public or game channels.
Unverified digital purchasers cannot attach a custom message to friend requests, but they can send/accept friend requests, and play with their friends.
Global Play is not available for unverified digital purchasers.

Again let’s consider that this is for people who have purchased the game via digital download, not for people playing a demo of the game.

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February 17, 2012February 17, 2012

Linden Lab Acquires Little Text People Game Studio

Talk of Linden Lab branching out into new areas beyond Second Life isn’t new, but the acquisition of Little Text People game studio is the first sign to outsiders that it’s really happening. I was alerted to this news via Ann OToole’s post over at SLUniverse, which in turn links to a post on TechCrunch about the acquisition.

Then via Inara Pey’s blog post on the subject I discover that Linden Lab have issued a press release on the matter, the question remains, what will come of this, well that’s probably right after the question of who the bloody hell Little Text People are and what do they do?

Little Text People are in the interactive fiction game, which is something I’ve mused over before with regards to Second Life, it’s a perfectly feasible aim but seems somewhat wasted to a degree in a sandbox as rich as Second Life with it’s current character development limitations, which is probably why Linden Lab this see this as a suitable venture for their beyond Second Life line…. that’s not the name of the line by the way!

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February 3, 2012February 3, 2012

BattleBeast Breedables

BBB Count down to launch — Countdown To Launch Press

Celebrating 2012 as the Chinese Year of the Dragon, BattleBeast Breedables introduces a revolutionary concept in SL: combining a breedable animal with gaming. The BattleBeast Breedables Dragon is the first SL project to unify the fun of breedables, gaming, and role play (RP). Our very exciting “Countdown to Launch” project started last week, with a Closed Beta. “This testing is an instrumental part of our program”, said BattleBeast Resident, “I might add that Closed Beta has gone quite smoothly and the group of people who’ve been testing the dragon have been happy with the project and are very enjoyable to work with.”

What’s so revolutionary about a breeding dragon, one might ask? Well, the BattleBeast Breedables dragons don’t JUST produce off-spring, eat, interact, and look amazing in accessories… (although they DO look amazing in accessories), the Beasts battle! Gamers will appreciate that XP, Levels are earned through battle. Stamina, strength and speed are a blend of Nature and Nuture: Breeding and Battle. As you breed your dragon traits to produce the best possible (“Nature”), the dragon also gains through battle (“Nurture”).

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February 2, 2012February 2, 2012

LL Should Consider Group And Event Pages

There has been a bit of a hoo-ha going on about Linden Lab throttling llGiveInventory to 5K per hour per owner, per sim. as explained in Jira-SVC-7631. This sounds like a reasonable limit at first glance, it sounds like an even more reasonable limit on second glance when you consider that a single script couldn’t do this before the throttle anyway. However the ever inventive users of Second Life have got around this limit to allow subscribers to send out announcements quickly. This has unfortunately exposed a security flaw that had to be urgently addressed.

A few things stand out here, one being why the hell do we need to send thousands of notecards and textures to people in the first place. Another, the issue of communications, in this case I’m with Linden Lab, they needed to address a security issue but there remain communication issues. This change will break content.

Reading the Jira, most of the concerns are from people who run mailing lists, there is one major exception in the shape and form of 7Seas Fishing creator Seven Shikami whose game uses llGiveInventory. However it’s mostly about mailing lists, with people concerned that if they use a large mailing list that hits the throttle, all items in a sim owned by them that use llGiveInventory will not work for a while, that includes any scripted vendors that use the function. I don’t know what would happen if the vendors used llGiveInventorylist instead, I’d imagine they’d still be throttled.

However this really highlights a flaw in the group announcement system, delivering inventory to so many users for an announcement, when really we should be just pointing people in the direction of the notice. Google + and Facebook both allow people to create pages for their business or communities, it’s time really to move group notices to the Second Life profiles website and implement this into the viewer. This would mean that instead of people having to have yet another landmark, notecard and texture in their inventory, they’d just follow the link to see the texture, be able to teleport from the link and see detailed information about any new product launch or event.

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Duran Duran — The UFO Club