Domain name updates

by Mithoron, 92 days ago

With the latest changes by Guild Launch, we now can support subdomains for all our sites. As such, you can now access all the sites in the form of game.the-eternal-watch.com

As such, all our websites now have the following URL's:

1. World of Warcraft - http://wow.the-eternal-watch.com
   
2. Rift - http://rift.the-eternal-watch.com
   
3. SWTOR - http://swtor.the-eternal-watch.com
   
4. Planetside2 - http://planetside2.the-eternal-watch.com
   
5. BF/COD/MOH - http://fps.the-eternal-watch.com
   
6. Aion - http://aion.the-eternal-watch.com

Those addresses will now get you to the appropriate homepages and from now on I'll be utilizing that form of URL for any future games and additional web sites.

Paid sites (currently WoW, Rift, SWTOR) can use the subdomain names for everything (forums, galleries, etc.); however, the free sites will have to navigate still utilizing the "the-eternal-watch-game.guildlaunch.com" domains, but if you can get to the homepages, every other link works fine!

As always, the old addresses will always work, so nothing really is changing in terms of your bookmarks and that unless you want to clean them up a bit.

League of Legends - The WoW of MOBA's?

by Mithoron, 109 days ago

A lot of people have been looking for something to in their spare time...too tired of WoW or other MMO's and still waiting on SWTOR, BF3, CODMW3, etc. to come out. Several of us have been playing League of Legends so here's a quick blurb for those interested!

MMORPG.COM wrote:

League of Legends : The WoW of MOBAs? Posted Oct 07, 2011 by Suzie Ford League of Legends is a game that is taking the online world by storm. Called a MOBA (multiplayer online battle arena), League of Legends recently expanded with Dominion. MMORPG.com's Joe Sanicky has a comprehensive new review of League of Legends. Check out why Joe thinks that LoL just might be the WoW of MOBAs. Leave us your reactions in the comments. Quote: Whether it is to laud or condemn them Riot’s vocal fans are quick to judge their multitude of trend-setting decisions which include but are not limited to: a player-powered banning system, bi-weekly champion releases, various e-sports offerings, oft radical balance changes, and most recently a new map and game mode. Never has the time been better for League of Legends players to take to the Fields of Justice to exactly their deadly plans, however, does the game hold up the scrutiny of millions or is all the success just an enormous, hype-driven fluke? It’s time to find out! Read more of Joe Sanicky's League of Legends: The WoW of MOBAs?

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World of Warcraft: The Modern WoW Player

by Mithoron, 110 days ago

MMORPG.COM wrote:

Ah the good old days when gamers were hardcore and the rest of the world was casual. But in today's gaming world, the definitive line between the two has become blurred with things like raid finders and two-player dungeons. In today's column, MMORPG.com's Joe Sanicky takes a look at hardcore vs casual when it comes to World of Warcraft. Check it out and then leave your thoughts in the comments. Column By Joseph Sanicky on October 10, 2011 The Modern WoW Player \th? ?mä-d?rn ?wau? ?pl?-?r\ n, 1: a person partaking of the massively multiplayer online game World of Warcraft past the time of vanilla content. 2: slang terminology usually referencing a target’s gaming habits and skills 3: also known as a “casual” gamer, circa sometime between the expansions The Burning Crusade and Wrath of the Lich King With the new Raid Finder imminent in patch 4.3 my thoughts concerning World of Warcraft lately have been heavy with the gravitas between the ever increasing divide between “casual” and “hardcore” players. I’ve touched upon this before in previous articles but never before has the issue been such an honest-to-Old Gods slap in the face to the hardcore crowd. With the Raid Finder we may be on the advent of a truly new age on the MMO timeline, an age where the long held elite content becomes the homogenised grind fodder of the masses. Unfortunately I have absolutely zero first-hand experience with raiding in WoW at any point in time or level. Fortunately I know many people who have copious amounts of experience raiding at every point in time and at every level in the history of WoW! Below is a snippet of one of the handful of interviews I conducted with past raiders. Joe Sanicky: Can you give us a brief rundown of your gaming history when it comes to MMOs? Former WoW Raider: Well I played Everquest a bit when it first launched, it was my first real MMO. I only played a few weeks and never really got anywhere deep in the game but I could tell it was a game where you couldn’t get anywhere without committing to it. Later on I decided to pick up WoW because my boyfriend played it launch and ended up getting really addicted. I got into a top tier guild and raided from release to October 16th, 2009 at which point I quit and sold my account. Recently I’ve played Rift some and really liked how it combined being casual and hardcore…at first at least. J: Why did you quit WoW? R: I quit WoW because you could be hardcore or casual and do well, plus it was literally eating up all of my time. J: How did raiding change from vanilla to Lich King? R: For one it used to be forty man raids which, obviously, required forty competent, coordinated people. It was so much harder than nowadays. Strategy, gear, resists, and teamwork had to be at peak levels at all times to complete even the easiest raid. There were no Joe Schmoes raiding and winning. You had to show up every night and wipe over and over perfecting your guild’s strats, which weren’t instantly shared on the internet to help everyone through. It was the epitome of hardcore gaming, even outside of actual raids doing all the prep work. In the Burning Crusade it was still pretty difficult, but they kept making it easier and easier. For one thing bosses started getting nerfed and did less and less damage; raids were changed from 40 to 25 man (which was one of the hardest parts of raiding, getting everyone together and working). The patch that completely nerfed Black Temple is when raiding took a nose dive for me and Blizzard started setting the stage for the casuals to play end-game content. I think the badge system was also started in BC. Lich King was just ridiculous. They made the game so casual mode. People figured out strategies super-fast and everyone was pushing through content super, super fast! Our guild beat 25 man Trial of the Crusader and then people started to pug the raid shortly after we beat it. That was the last straw for me. Blizzard realized that regular players should be able to do all this content and my guild and I liked having to put in all that time to actually accomplish things and that turned off everyone to even doing the content. J: Was there hard mode content back then to make it better for you? R: It started in BC but for a while there were no hard-mode raids, LK started hard mode raids. Ten man hard modes were pretty fun and reminded me of back-in the day raiding but it really wasn’t the same, the challenge I’d sacrificed countless hours to surmount just wasn’t there anymore. All the interviews were done over Skype and were 30+ minutes long so I can’t post full transcript here, however needless to say a pattern definitely emerged as I listened to more and more stories about “the good ol’days.” It is clear that regardless of the actual content (lore, purpose of the quests, role-playing, et cetera) the main draw to all those players was the absurd difficulty of it all. While I cannot personally speak of this mind-set regarding World of Warcraft raiding, I can sympathize as a former “hardcore” player of Ninja Gaiden. I understand the drive to accomplish a gaming goal merely because it is so difficult, for the prestige that it would garner from the rest of the community, and for the self-satisfaction that accomplishing those seemingly impossible goals results in. I can also relate to how those old vanilla raiders must have felt with the new content in the expansions. As much as Ninja Gaiden Black was the perfect vehicle for competitive action game players to strut their stuff it was hardly the most accessible “for fun” gaming experience. While there were plenty of players like Sneh who played for keeps there were a multitude of more casual players who were looking for fun combat without the sadistic frustration and difficulty. The developers heeded these player’s concerns and the next few games removed the stringent scoring system in favour of a more light-hearted structure (a.k.a. removing time limits and the truly competitive scene). While the forums of hardcore players slowly faded away the player base increased for each subsequent game and the developers garnered more fame and success than they ever did when catering to the hardcore players. A sampling of some of the best players ever to play Ninja Gaiden Black. The cases for both games are remarkably similar and included a seeming betrayal of the core community for further success in the open market. The creation of the modern World of Warcraft player was not only imminent with the success of the game, but completely inescapable within the confines of the business world and every former player from Vanilla times. In essence it added to what would eventually be this stereotype by supporting Blizzard at the game’s inception. Today we have players complaining about the race for gear and the pointlessness of it all while yesterday (when gear meant something) this function of gameplay was lauded and celebrated by those who were able to gain the gear. The transference of those emotional responses from a minority to a majority of the playerbase resulted in a toxic response from the old guard, despite the absurdity of it all. Sure the empirical case was that of lowering the difficulty of the game and increasing accessibility to players with less time or dedication, but the net result was more players experiencing that high of getting great gear they could be proud to have. More people prospered from this alteration and the old guard should be able to step aside from their caustic emotional responses and at the very least admit that, in most cases, such changes were better for the silent majority. “Okay Joe, great rambling, but what is the point of all this? Why restate what literate forum goers have said time and time again?” The answer is rather simple, and a bit idealistic. That faux dictionary definition I supplied at the beginning of the article isn’t there just to rile up the reader, it is to remind every former or current player of World of Warcraft what the community has devolved into; the old versus the new, the good versus the bad, the casual versus the hardcore. Such classifications are utterly pointless in this era of gaming and avail no one anything, especially because of the fact that the direction MMO games have taken over the past decade was entirely unavoidable. The genre couldn’t keep the qualities of a “cult-classic” while becoming a huge commercial success and all the new players couldn’t be as “hardcore” as the old ones. The perpetuation of these sentiments doesn’t even make sense considering that the new players never had the chance to experience of understand what the old guard adored and thus can’t be blamed for being a “casual” when that is the only type of player the game is actually supporting. I mean, take me for example. I didn’t really play the game seriously until a few months ago, I never had the chance to be an old school raider, and it wasn’t physically possible. Does that mean I’m an unskilled casual with no aspirations to do well in the game? Does it? The modern WoW players are here to stay, and they’ll also be playing all the new MMOs to come. It is time to accept it and work with them.

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Upcoming patch and guild changes...

by Mithoron, 117 days ago

With the upcoming patch and the ability for at least Officers to claim ownership of the guild if the guild leader is MIA for more than 30 days, Blayz will be taking the guild leadership in her name in order to preserve the name of the guild. With so few people playing and many waiting for SWTOR and GW2 to come out, there is little to no guild management these days; however, we wanted to make sure somebody responsible was taking the reigns until things settled out.

Blayz has been running the Rift guild for the past few months so this should be nothing new to her. I will not be returning to Azeroth and even my tenure in Telara is questionable. The next many of you see me will probably be in a galaxy far far away...

SWTOR Release date announced: 12/20/2011

by Mithoron, 127 days ago

Quote:

BioWare and LucasArts are pleased to announce that Star Wars™: The Old Republic™ will launch on December 20, 2011 in North America and on December 22, 2011 in the European Launch Territories! The announcement was first made by BioWare co-founders Dr. Ray Muzyka and Dr. Greg Zeschuk during their keynote address at the 2011 Eurogamer Expo in London, England. Speaking to a packed room of press and fans alike, Dr. Muzyka acknowledged the weight of the moment and the patience of the fans. Quote: “This is an incredible moment for everyone at BioWare and our partners at LucasArts who have dedicated their lives to build this extraordinary game. We appreciate the patience from the millions of fans who have been waiting for the game’s release.” Each copy of Star Wars: The Old Republic will come with 30 days of subscription time, after which you have the option to continue playing with one of the following monthly subscription fees: 1 Month Subscription: $14.99 (£8.99/€12.99) 3 Month Subscription: $13.99 per month (one-time charge of $41.97/£25.17/€35.97) 6 Month Subscription: $12.99 per month (one-time charge of $77.94/£46.14/€65.94) Those who have pre-ordered the game and entered their pre-order code on StarWarsTheOldRepublic.com are eligible for Early Game Access. If you haven’t yet reserved your copy of the game, be sure to visit our Pre-Order page and secure your place in the Old Republic now! We want to thank you for your continued passion, dedication and support. Though one part of this incredible journey is coming to an end, we are confident that you all share our excitement for this new beginning. Be sure to check back to StarWarsTheOldRepublic.com as well as our Twitter and Facebook pages for all the latest news and updates on Star Wars: The Old Republic.

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MMO Revenues down, microtransactions climbing

by Mithoron, 133 days ago

MMORPG.COM wrote:

General : New Report Reveals Declining MMO Subscription Revenue Posted Sep 15, 2011 by Suzie Ford A new report from industry analyst iHS: ScreenDigest shows that revenue generated from both MMO and non-MMO subscriptions has declined for fiscal 2010. This marks the first decline since 2002. While the report shows subscription losses at approximately 5% overall in 2010 as compared to 2009, revenue generated through microtransaction sales is increasing. iHS indicates that subscription models for revenue generation are "at a turning point". In general, MMO revenues are expected to increase over the next several years from $2.7 billion USD to $3.1 billion USD in 2015. iHS concludes that microtransactions will be the driving force behind the increase from now through 2015. iHS has also determined that Activision-Blizzard owns a 31% stake in the market with GameForge and BigPoint in second and third places respectively. Read the report's highlights at iHS: ScreenDigest.

MMORPG.COM wrote:

Story of the Week: Subscriptions Losing to RMT This week's Story of the Week highlights a recent analysis from iHS and Screen Digest that details a dip in subscription revenue in favor of microtransactions. Does this herald the end of the monthly subscription? Editorial By William Murphy on September 17, 2011 This week’s Story of the Week is a bit of a “Debbie Downer”. A recently publish analysis of the online games market revealed that subscription revenue has declined while revenue from microtransactions has increased the profits for everyone overall. However, I’m not so sure it’s time to start crying about falling skies or the end of the subscription. If you take into effect that several companies in the past year or so have dropped the subscription model in a last ditch effort to save their games, this can probably explain the 5% drop in subscription revenue the report details. Meanwhile microtransaction totals have increased significantly (in the face of these changes), but what’s more interesting to note is that the cash-shop revenue has apparently increased the total revenue of the market. This means more people are buying things from these item malls, and it’s enough to increase the overall market by nearly half a billion dollars. One has to wonder how much this will increase in 2012 when Guild Wars 2 launches depending on their microtransactions. Will MOBAs be taken into account as well? Because they’re undoubtedly driving some of this growth too. I’m half-tempted to buy the whole document from iHS, because I’d like to see just where they’re pulling their numbers from. One thing is for certain however… the industry is shifting. More and more hybrid revenue models will come into play, and the subscription will eventually be for the elite games only. And who knows how long even they can hold on?

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In Memoriam...

by Mithoron, 140 days ago

Player Perspectives: Moving On from Your MMO

by Mithoron, 140 days ago

MMORPG.COM wrote:

There comes that time in the life of any MMO player when the game du jour seems more like work than fun. It's that day that a player realizes that it's time to move on. In today's Player Perspectives column, MMORPG.com's Isabelle Parsley takes a look at that exact topic. Check out what Isabelle has to say and then leave us your comments. Column By Isabelle Parsley on September 09, 2011 So here it is, that point I knew would eventually come, as it always does: that moment or series of moments when I become aware that I’m disengaging from a game. For the last 5 or 6 years, there hasn’t been a game that’s held my undivided attention for a whole year, though some have come close: my return to EQ2 after the sweeping crafting additions and – surprisingly perhaps – my return to post-NGE SWG, where I diddled about with critter creation for quite some time before the grind got to me. I’ve been back in WoW for 10 months pretty much to the day, but the shine is wearing off and I recently hit that point where I know that sooner or later I’m going to unsubscribe. It usually starts by not knowing quite what to do with myself when I’m logged in: the plethora of options (especially for an altoholic like me) is still there, but none of them really appeal. So I log in to interact with friends or do a couple of easy things here and there, but not much more. Eventually the desire to log on is replaced by the feeling that I should, even though it’s something of a chore and I’d rather be doing something else. And someday I just won’t log on, after which I’ll eventually let my sub lapse. My problem is that I’m MMOnogamous: I only play one game at a time. My other problem is that I still expect – or at least hope – that one game can do it for me without hitting that boredom point, even though I know it’s an unrealistic hope. I have a friend who, through her job, is able to maintain half a dozen active game subscriptions, and she moves from game to game every few months, thereby circumventing the tedium that seems to invariably set in for most of us. It works for her, but I’m not sure it would work for me. The fact is I don’t think any game is capable of holding my attention forever. That’s like expecting to enjoy playing Monopoly every night for several years running. Games are repetitive by nature, most especially MMOs, and even content additions can’t really hide that fact for year after year; sooner or later the entertainment value of doing the same thing wears off, and we (or at least I) start craving something new. Aside from that, one of the things I enjoy most about games is learning them, so once that learning curve levels off, a game needs to be damn good or I’ll start looking elsewhere. Even so, part of me still thinks there might be the One Game out there, the one that will hold me as long as my first MMO did, even if rationally I know that’s unlikely. When I started playing MMOs there wasn’t a great deal of choice out there and everything was new, so that learning curve lasted me quite a while. But nothing beats one’s first MMO for depth of experience; nothing can, and I know it, even though I still hope. It’s not a clearly-defined age thing, but a number of my older friends share this experience and the mild angsty-ness of leaving a game. My younger friends, on the other hand, generally seem quite at ease flitting from one game to another and they don’t have this view that a game should be forever. They just happily play something until it gets boring and then move on, without asking themselves any deep existential-MMO questions. There are many ways to approach one’s gaming, and no single way is right. To a certain extent I enjoy asking myself these questions, because I like figuring out what does and doesn’t make a game attractive to me and what does and doesn’t hold my attention; armchair game design at its finest. I might be writing a different column if I had a new game lined up to play, but I don’t. None of the games I’ve already played appeal to me at the moment, to the point where I’m asking myself if this is game-lassitude or gaming lassitude in general. It happens: work gets busy, real life makes more demands (in my case most recently, moving house; and in the case of a couple of friends this year, additions to the family), and we lose the head-space needed to really give as much attention to a game as we might otherwise. It’s been a very long time since I played MMOs to escape from real life, at least not in the negative sense, though I’ve been there before: I have in the past immersed myself in a game as a way to avoid thinking about real and pressing life issues, and I’m sure I’m not the only one, but I outgrew that pretty quickly. MMOs are entertainment and social bonding, and while they absolutely do have many positive qualities, in most cases they’re certainly not a solution to real-life issues. Nevertheless, I do know that if a game has grabbed me, like any other pastime, I will make time for it if I possibly can. So when I stop wanting to make time for a game or when another activity (or another game) seems more attractive, that’s when I know it’s probably time to move on. Even if it’s not easy; there are a bunch of people I won’t see much anymore when I quit WoW, and while we keep in touch via the guild forums, it’s not quite the same. And, loner though I may be when I play, I am still sociable and I’m going to miss those interactions. I don’t hold game or internet friendships as cheaply as some, especially not when I’ve known some of these people for nearly a decade; but I also know that we’ll likely run into each other again at some point. Don’t get me wrong: I’m not pissing and moaning and crying tragedy, but I am aware of the sense of ending I get whenever I start disengaging from a game. And like I said, it’s worse right now because I don’t have another game to look forward to. If I had just received a TSW beta invite, you can bet my column would have been less elegiac and rather more “So long and thanks for all the fish!” I’d be interested to know whether people’s sentiments regarding game endings do vary visibly by age, or if it’s more of a personality thing. Do you agonize over leaving a game (friends, familiar things) or do you just up and leave with a jaunty wave? Do you only leave once you have another game lined up? Do you try to keep in touch with your friends once they’re gone, or do you actually try to take some of them with you? And no, you can’t have my stuff.

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Ode to Healers!

by Mithoron, 148 days ago

MMORPG.COM wrote:

Guild Sores: Go Team! We all give our healers a tough time, they can run out of mana and then the whole team just drops like flies. It happens, because sometimes we bite off more than we can chew. We’ve all seen it, and probably even experienced it. But we have to stop yelling at the healers. They’re our lifeblood… literally. In today's Guild Sores, MMORPG.com's David North takes a look at notion of 'healer appreciation' in Guild Sores: Go Team! Media By David North on September 02, 2011 We all give our healers a tough time, they can run out of mana and then the whole team just drops like flies. It happens, because sometimes we bite off more than we can chew. We’ve all seen it, and probably even experienced it. But we have to stop yelling at the healers. They’re our lifeblood… literally. advertisement You want them to sit there while healing, calculating how much mana they have, with how much health you have, and how much damage the enemy does to you per second and then multiply that by how many party members they have to heal, while actually performing the task of healing the entire party? They don’t even get to enjoy the combat visuals usually as they’re too busy looking at raid party frames and green bars. Next time you’re out adventuring… /hug your healer. They deserve it. Don’t be like Cartoon Dave.

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Thank you BlackendLock!

by Mithoron, 161 days ago

Thanks to BlackendLock for his latest donation to the guild funds! It is your donations that keep this site, the Ventrilo server, and other guild-related costs going, so anything and everything is much appreciated!