Pirates of the Carribean has launched, quietly but forcefully, making it one of the most successful Massive games this year. :)

If you haven’t checked it out yet, it’s a free-to-play game, and the optional monthly is only ten bucks. Even though it’s aimed at casual folks, there are terms like ‘PvP‘ and whatnot on the official site. Interesting, interesting.

Ready to challenge your fellow Pirates for the sheer joy of the battle? Choose one of Pirates of the Caribbean Online’s PVP games and prepare to take on the Curse of the Black Pearl.

They don’t actually explain that term anywhere on the page … is PvP really something the kids today just ‘get’? Sheesh. I am old.

The client is downloadable from the official site, me hearties.

Normally I’d have a log here of last week’s hilarious hijinks in EverQuest 2, but we didn’t play last week because our Necromancer was at about 50,000 feet during playtime.

The time off gave me an opportunity to reconnect with Nightfall, my current chosen path along Guild Wars’ magical trail. I’ve never run a character through it, so I’m at about level 12 - my last major landmark was beating the Jokanur Diggings mission on Master.

It involved me killing a bunch of zombies, and then taking on something that sort of looked like a form-shifting two-ton lawn ornament.

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MMOG customer service is getting better, right? Almost across the board, the experience of getting help inside your favorite gameworld is getting less onerous.

Well …

Herein lies the tale of one man in uniform who just wanted to get his Hero on while he was abroad, and has been given the run around for going on three months. I’ve done what I can to help without going public with this, and it’s gotten him nowhere. Soo … I hope this informs and entertains.

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This week there were no closures, and the drama just made me want to puke so I tried to ignore it in favour of something positive. IE: Nick Yee’s Work. This week’s Massive Update is brought to you by the letter D.

The Daedalus Project is an ongoing research project run by Nick Yee, a Ph.D. graduate from Stanford University and a man widely regarded as one of the foremost researchers into the field of virtual worlds. Every so often, Yee releases a few short papers based on the information he’s gathered.

If you’ve never heard of the Daedalus project, the best place to start is at The Daedalus Gateway, which highlights some of the most interesting topics Yee has followed up on in his work. For example, did you know the average player spends about twenty hours a week playing? The average age of an MMO Gamer is 26, and more than a third of Massive gamers are married?

“Another caricature of video gamers is that they are solitary hermits, but the data on MMORPG players show that 80% of MMORPG players play with someone they know in RL (a romantic partner, family member, or friend) on a regular basis,” says one of Yee’s reports. “Thus, MMORPGs are in fact highly social environments where new relationships are forged and existing relationships are reinforced.”

This newest chapter in the ongoing project deals with a bevy of fascinating topics, including memorable experiences, leadership roles, and the life-cycle of a player.

So, by now you’ve all read the latest Daedalus, right? Right? Good.

By far the funniest bit Nick has included in this one is the Guild Tag Generator. Every time you hit that page, you get 100 randomly created tags back.

Guild names below are generated from a grammar described here and with a weighted vocabulary drawn from about 22,000 guild names from 5 World of Warcraft servers. This guild name generator is a part of the PARC PlayOn Project.

In the spirit of Foton, I present to you some of my best finds from playing with the tool:

• <Champions of Nuclear Festivities> - Don’t get too close, listen for the clicking.
• <Dragon Shenanigans> - Shortsheeting Onyxia, egging Blackwing’s lair, etc.
• <All Galactica> - Genetic engineering is the topic in /gu.
• <Cult of the Unsung Partners> - A guild entirely made up of WoW widows bitching about their partners.
• <Legion of the Tokies Azeroth> - Alternative uses for plants is the order of the day in /gu.
• <Tower of the Kill Brigade> - Really stupid RP Guild. “We members of the Tower of the Kill Brigade to smite you down, evil no-good evil do-er!”
• <AVERAGE> - “Uh, yeah, I guess I’m okay with grouping up.”
• <SCHADENFREUDE> - “I dunno what it is, but there’s something about them I can’t define in English.”
• <Illusion of Shaman Death> - Tell me about it. Damned Dranei.
• <Gods of Craig Degrocco Peak> - Sounds like a really lame Pantheon, really. Lame mountain, too.
• <The Moon Happieness> or <The Fearless Maffia> - You just know whoever started that guild is 30 and should know how to spell. Stay away from these guys.
• <Azeroth Azeroth> - The planet so nice they named it twice!
• <Butchers of the Nerf Paladins> - A guild name and a message! How topical!
• <Brotherhood of the Guild Name> - Now that’s just lazy.
• <Crusaders of Angst Filled Tribe> - At least they’re honest.

Then we have the weird ones, which I think need no explanation:

• <Felines of Cheap Asian Despair>
• <Cabal of the Cold Cow>
• <Meat Ambassador>
• <Funeral Idiot>
• <The Path of Mild Bees>
• <The Batman of Sandfury Lane>

And finally, my chosen tag for a new guild: <The Omglazerkittensmewmew>

It’s now well over a month since I attended Austin Games Conference. One of the highlights of that trip was the opportunity to meet with some of the minds behind Star Wars Galaxies at the SOE-Austin studio. It was a very informal thing, something that John Blakely had mentioned as a possibility when I had the chance to talk with him at SOE Gamers Day early this year. Schedules and stars aligned, thankfully, and I made the trek out to their offices for a few hours with the game’s creative leads. So why hasn’t it shown up on the site until now? I blame illness and brain worms. Hopefully my memories here aren’t so stale as to be useless. I’ll try to give an overview of the experience and the topics we touched upon, which ranged from the SWG development process all the way to the role of bloggers and podcasters in MMOG communities. The latter conversation was, admittedly, as much friendly conversation as idea exploration for my panel session that Thursday.

The big picture: SWG is still not a game that I (personally) want to play every day, but you really have to hand it to those guys for the passion and persistence they’ve displayed in keeping that ship afloat. Also, DCUO concept art is gorgeous.
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Sorry, had some posting problems. Three posts just showed up on the site at the same time. Just in case you missed them:

Just a Little Bit Hardcore - PvP gets me focused in World of Warcraft.

Desert Delights  - Our ongoing EQ2 adventures in the Desert of Flames.

The MMOG/D&D 4th Edition Connection - I’d hope it would be obvious.