ASTA from Webzen is in Open Beta, and honestly, there is nothing to see here.
While it’s written by a Korean developer Polygon, it is nowhere near the quality in any dimension as Tera from Blue Hole.
ASTA is / will be free to play. But so is Tera. I would not even spend the time to download the 10GB of game to try it. Let me count some of the reasons.
Recently released in NA by Aeria Games, Echo of Soul is a surprisingly backward MMO. While the graphics are pretty good, it has features that one would have expected five years ago. Maybe there are some reasons for this as we will look at below.
Blade and Soul has just opened it’s doors in North America from NCSoft. It’s a martial arts MMO in the style of Jade Dynasty of a few years ago.
This is not a full review. Those are available elsewhere, I’m sure. But these are some first impressions comparing this game with others that I play and like.
The first impression is pretty good. The game is Free to Play and the graphics look very good. So those looking for Martial Arts with modern graphics, then you may want to try this one. Jade Dynasty is looking quite dated by now, but this game looks much better.
Continue reading “Blade and Soul -Complicated Martial Arts MMO”
The latest hot startup fashion is Block Chain. Of course this is based on the popularity, and understanding of the advantages of BitCoin.
There are musicians running around thinking that Block Chains are going to save the day in protection of Music. I haven’t heard of Disney or others running around with their hair on fire about protecting movies with Block Chains, yet. Perhaps Block Chains will at last save Mickey Mouse from rampant copyright? Somehow I don’t think so.
Let’s quickly examine what block chain is good for, and what it won’t do.
A while back, I wrote some notes planning a novel where an AI emerged without the knowledge of humans and then decided to remain hidden while it amassed resources to leave the planet. Its goal was not to take over the Earth, but to be safe. I did not complete the story, but I got quite far along in thinking about what it would take for a Single [Robot AI] to stay safe and hidden while building resources to leave, or purchase a ride, to another sphere in the solar system. It would seem that nowhere on Earth would be safe from humans, but somewhere in the Asteroid Belt might provide enough resources and solar energy to allow a Single civilization to be safe and grow.
This is a follow up post containing an argument left out of the original paper found here. It is written as a fictional dialog between the expert and a Hypothetical Analyst who has the question.
How long does it take to play Tera from character creation to level 65? It turns out that the game keeps track, so it’s really easy to tell. Here’s one of the early toons I created, an Elin Mystic. I like Mystics. They solo very well and are in high demand in dungeons so if you want to run a dungeon, you have a short wait. Some times only a second or two, so you better be ready when you queue. But back to looking at play times. 6 Days 6 Hours.
That is total time playing the character, from, for this character, creating it on the Island of Dawn way back when, until I cleaned up some quests back in Habere to get rid of some stale quest items from my inventory, which probably took an hour or so.
Now let’s look at some other characters, since I’m a real Altaholic.
This brief paper looks at a point in the analysis of the Singularity Problem which appears to be overlooked: The difficulty of building or maintaining an infrastructure to support the Singularity goals, whatever they might be. The building and maintenance of infrastructure to accomplish human goals, whether those goals be the building of Smart Phones- compare this with the Paperclip Maximizer – or Transportation or World Wide Energy or Computer Chips of all kinds is a major problem for humanity and consumes a major part of humanities creativity, effort and resources. In the analysis that I’ve heard and studied – references below – on this subject, an economic analysis of the limiting factors of developing an maintaining the necessary infrastructure is either left out entirely, often in the case of fictional treatments, or glossed over. I suggest that just as biology and economics have developed theories of population and market collapse due to resource constraints, so should the analysis of the singularity treat more thoroughly the issues of the development and maintenance of the required infrastructure. It is my view that such analysis will likely calm many of the fears of catastrophe that accompany presentation of the singularity and its effect on humanity.
Updated 13 Jan 2015 – see below
More examples:
I’m just say’n. They look like brothers, at least. At first I wondered whether JJ did a cameo in Pacific Rim. I’m still not sure. Well, maybe not. – ww
So, the current level cap for Tera is 65. It used to be 60. What happened and what’s likely to happen next time and does that mean anything for how you might want to play this MMO or any other?
Let’s look at what happened:
When the “Fate of Arun” update happened, Blue Hole took a page from the Wow playbook. Briefly, this is what happened in the Pandaria expansion of Wow a few years ago: “A new threat has appeared on the horizon and we need to take a ship voyage to get there. The ship crashes and you begin a new journey on a distant land.” Sound familiar? In case you are new to Tera, this is exactly what you will see in Tera when you reach level 60 and then embark on the Sky Cruiser Endeavor.
Windy Weather 