Over the years it has become a common practice for people to sell their virtual accounts online to other players. Most of the time people do this for MMORPGs such as World of Warcraft, Everquest, Runescape and Aion Online to name a few. Today people can sell Aion accounts on sites like MMOBay.net, a auction site where people can buy or sell their online characters. Not only can people sell or buy Aion accounts, but users can also trade their account with other gamers.
MMOBay.net is free to use after an initial signup fee which is used to validate the users account, making it a safe place for members to buy, sell and trade accounts. There have been over 200,000 listed auctions and currently has 43,000+ members. The practice of buying online characters will continue and if you are going to do it, you should do it in a safe place like MMOBay.net.
Apple’s big announcement today was certainly significant in terms of asserting the company’s dominance in the mobile space, but what does it really mean for gamers? We look at what was shown today, and ask Ngmoco founder and CEO Neil Young for his perspective.
This morning we spent some time with Apple’s new iPad tablet device at the company’s press conference and hands-on demonstration at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts Theater in San Francisco. Given the ballyhoo and speculation, there was virtually nothing that Apple could have revealed that would have matched the hype, so it’s understandable that there has been some cynicism from observers.
Outside of the questions regarding the challenges Apple faces in introducing it’s “third pillar” (to borrow a term from Nintendo) it’s worth addressing a few questions and observations regarding the device’s strengths and weaknesses as a game platform. Truthfully, the game demonstrations at this morning’s press conference were arguably the least impressive of any of the products shown. Several groups were invited to test Apple’s new software development kit two weeks ago to see what they could do, and both Gameloft and Electronic Arts showed their results. Gameloft had spent some time adapting its online first person shooter N.O.V.A. to the device, while Electronic Arts made some tweaks to Need for Speed: SHIFT, it’s fast, tilt-controlled adaptation of the popular console game. Both titles are powered by the Open GL 2.0 graphics engine, so they scaled up nicely to the iPad’s larger screen, but they also exposed some aspects of iPad development that studios will have to adapt to quickly. For N.O.V.A., which uses and on-screen d-pad and fire button to simulate a console controller, there were definitely some physical issues to overcome. The iPad is not just a larger iPod Touch…it is actually a slightly different form factor because the screen doesn’t sit flush with edge of the device. As you can see in the photographs, there is a black frame around the edge of the screen. For games with on-screen d-pads, you now have to reach over the frame in order to place your thumbs on the screen – which is much more uncomfortable than playing on an iPhone or iPod Touch. Interestingly, the Gameloft team had started putting some thought into new multi-touch controls, including a novel way of targeting multiple enemies at once by drawing a box around targets.
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PlayStation 3-owning fans of the Tales series will be sad to hear that currently Namco Bandai has no plans to release the PS3 port of the 2008 Japanese role-playing game in the US. The port hit shelves in Japan last September and is about to get a combination anime/downloadable content Blu-Ray this May.
Siliconera reports today that a Tales of Vesperia anime movie called The First Strike is being bundled with downloadable content in Blu-Ray, DVD, and UMD form for a May 28 release. We asked Namco Bandai about a possible US release and were told that currently the company has no plans to bring the PlayStation 3 port stateside.
“As for First Strike, it is possible that an anime publisher in the US may pick up the license as there have been Tales anime releases in the US,” a Namco Bandai America publicist told GamePro, “but NBGA have no details regarding this issue at the moment.”
Namco Bandai previously released a PS3 port of the 2007 JRPG Eternal Sonata in the US which included new story content and playable characters. Similarly, the PS3 Tales of Vesperia features new content and a new character named Patty Fleur.
The First Strike anime serves as a prequel of the game’s story, covering the years main character Yuri Lowell spent as a knight. Siliconera warns hardcore fans who want to import the anime that “PSP/PS3 games are region free, but not Blu-ray discs or UMD movies. You’ll need a Japanese PS3 or PSP to play these.”
Lost in Nightmares, Capcom’s first of two new episodes for Resident Evil 5 takes the series back to its survival-horror roots. Along with a crazed, anchor-wielding enemy, the game takes on the look and feel of past titles of the series.
I don’t think I’m alone when I say that it felt like Resident Evil’s “pure horror” roots were ripped out of Resident Evil 5. To be fair, the game was a lot of fun and the series’ dramatic transformation into a more Gears of War-style cooperative action shooter worked for the most part. But as a fan of horror movies and Resident Evil’s survival-horror origins, I felt oddly betrayed by the game’s emphasis on explosions over suspense. When I sat down to play the first of the two new episodes coming soon for Resident Evil 5, titled Lost in Nightmares, Capcom explained that the return to horror in the episode is a direct response to fans’ reactions to RE5’s departure from the genre.
“A lot of fans thought Resident Evil 5 was too much action and not enough survival horror,” admits Capcom’s product marketing manager Matt Dahlgren. “And Lost in Nightmares (the first new episode available) is our response to that. After the original game shipped, we took a lot of fan feedback into account before creating the new episodes. There are two main ways people play Resident Evil: there’s the slow and suspenseful way, which is the more traditional Resident Evil experience, and there’s the more action-packed experience, which was featured in Resident Evil 5.”
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George Hotz — or GeoHot, if you prefer — was known as “the kid who cracked the iPhone” back when he was 17-years-old. Now, roughly three years later, he claims he’s hacked the PlayStation 3 and is linking to the exploit today.
Last week, hacker George Hotz blogged that he had hacked the PlayStation 3. He spoke with the BBC on Monday announcing his exploits — and today, he’s releasing the exploit to the public.
“In the interest of openness, I’ve decided to release the exploit,” Hotz wrote on his blog. “Hopefully, this will ignite the PS3 scene, and you will organize and figure out how to use this to do practical things, like the iPhone when jailbreaks were first released. I have a life to get back to and can’t keep working on this all day and night.”
Hotz rose to prominence in 2007 when he released a hack for the iPhone. In an interview with the BBC, he said his exploits are motivated purely by curiosity. He also told the news outlet that though hacking the PS3 means users can run pirated games, he’ll have nothing to do with that aspect of hacking the PS3.
The hack gives users full access to the PS3’s memory and “therefore ring 0 access from OtherOS.”