At least one member on the No Prisoners, No Mercy team loves Eve Online (at least Julie says she “wants” to love the game).  However, while the good devs at CCP are busy considering bringing us “walking in stations” (which we have said all along might be vaporware) the devs at Cryptic studios are bringing it to us in less the four short months (ok – if they launch as scheduled they will). Here is the word from the executive producer  Craig Zinkievich – the man whose butt Julie has promised to kiss on main street  (We presume  with pants on. We passed the word along via Bill Roper but so far Mr. Zinkievish hasn’t taken Julie up on it) for helping to save Star Trek Online.  Julie may love the post apocalyptic genre but we are ALL Trekkies from way back  – you know, when Captain Kirk was the ONLY  Star Trek captain.

Here is the official word from Cryptic:

“We didn’t want to have interiors at launch,” said “Star Trek Online” executive producer Craig Zinkievich. “We thought it was just a little bit too much. We really wanted to make sure we delivered a really deep experience, but your bridge not being in the game, it really felt like a hole in the game, and it was just something that we had to put in.” – Craig Zinkievich, Executive Producer, Star Trek Online

Once the game goes live (or if you are amongst the lucky few in the beta  – which we dearly wish we were)  we will all get to choose from among 20 bridge designs.  Mr. Zinkievich said they are to function as social hubs but that’s alright with us. We happen to know Trekkies from all over the world and we have  ALOT of socializing to do!

SAY WHAT!!!

If you are like us, you love down loadable content (DLC)  for your stand alone pc games. Games like Fall Out 3 come immediately to mind.  If you are also like us, you get so tired of having to jump through hoops, open multiple accounts (which invariably generate spam) all just to buy said DLC.   We also get just a bit tired of having to buy content for ”points” which never seem to come in the same increments in which the content is sold (here is looking at YOU Microsoft).  Always, of course, necessitating buying more “Points” than is necessary to purchase the game. 

Wait! 

Gamestop to the rescue!!

According to a report in Arstechnica (who gets their information from Variety Magazine) “ the retailer will start selling digital content in its stores starting next year, and it already has backing from Sony and Microsoft. The new service will allow customers to pay for the content in store and then download it when they return home.”  You can read the article here.

SAY WHAT?

Remember how, just before the release of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 (MW2) was released, Activision/Blizzard head honcho Bobby Kotick caused a bit of a stir by saying he would  “raise the price [of MW2] even further if [he] could?”  Now that many players are up in arms (or not up in arms if they didn’t buy MW2) we all know why Mr. Kotick wanted that price raised. Here is an excerpt from article (below) over at Gamesindustry.biz (available here):

“Activision CEO Robert Kotick has exercised options on just over 1.93 million shares this week, allowing him to buy them at a price of USD 1.03 and sell them at between USD 11.43-11.54 each.” – Phil Elliott, Gamesindustry.biz

And a quick note, that puts the stock mentioned above worth around $20 million.

SAY…IT ISN’T SO…

Say it isn’t so…the endless trial (and tribulations) of Warhammer Online.  We had such high hopes! Paul Barnett was on our show several times! As we have said before, Paul Barnett could sell ice to polar bears in the dead of winter.  We are wondering if even he can sell the general gaming public on this:

Warhammer Online is one of the subjects we discuss with JMO and TIPPA on Show 48 (due out soon…we promise). Even though we are always ones to say “don’t nail the coffin lid shut just yet” on any game, this confirmation of the “endless trial subscription” coupled with the news of the 80 layoffs over at Mythic (we hoped that news wasn’t true either) doesn’t bode well for the future of the game.  While any discussion on the WarhammerOnline and what happened between the glory days of launch and now could fill a book (or at least several articles) the general feeling at the end of show 48 was that Mythic tried too hard to please World of Warcraft customers and not enough to please fans of the table top game.  

In the end, what we here at No Prisoners, No Mercy hope is that Mythic (or what ever EA calls them these days) will take a hint from Turbine and go the way of DDO (Dungeons and Dragons Online) and be free to play with some sort of micro-transaction business model.  The big question here is, of course, how do you keep them down on the virtual warhammer online farm after they have seen the latest MMOs.  THAT, my friends, is always an enormous task.

See you online,

The No Prisoners, No Mercy team.