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Cell: Cheapest cell phone deal (in Ontario anyway)
Fri, 19 Sep 2008

We all know cell phone plans are bad. Really bad. And doubly so in Canada.. but here is the best way to go for a cheap 'emergency batphone' approach.

First, lets break down the norm or what I assume is the norm..

A monthly plan is probably about $20 base for most people; my plan is some $20/200 thing, but I imagine whatever airtime and feature set the sweet spot is about $20 per plan. <conspiracy whisper>I'll tell you why I think that in a second</conspiracy> Furthermore, there is the bogus system access fee which is about $6 or $7 per month, plus any features, and the inevitable taxes. So we're all probably on the dole for about $30 per month, or more. (And on the phone when I was bugging them about the system access fee, the droid did in fact tell me it was to pay the government for 911 support, and of course its come out over the years this is not true. Thankfully, some cell resellers like Koodu are ditching that fee.)

I think this is the telco sweet spot, since consider.. if they can get you for about $30/mo 'or so', thats about $360 per year 'or so'; ie: About a buck a day, which just seems to convenient a number, no?

Pay as you go

I never much looked into pay as you go plans since essentially you put money into a credit pool and any airtime you use is charged against that. If you run out, fine, you can top it up.. but the airtime costs more than you'd like. If you don't run out however, the real kicker is they 'expire' the credit - usually after only 30 days. Absolutely territory we don't want to tread in as consumers. So if you're kicking in $20/month of expiry cash, you're not really ahead much on the regular monthly plans. But to note -- on pay as you go you get some free features (call display etc), and you have no system access fee (an immediate savings of $6/$7 per month). The big negative is the expiring money, and if you get voicemail then the voicemail counts against your minutes (ouch!), so usually you don't want voicemail on such a plan.

The deal however is .. Rogers will sell you a $100 voucher for airtime, that will expire after one year. They don't seem to advertise it much, and its REALLY hard to find on their website. I only managed to locate it by accident from a few links in obscure old forum postings. In the end, any Rogers Wireless store should be able to sell you a $100 voucher and apply it to your account. They want to sell you "top ups" instead, which always last no more than 30 days. But the "$100 voucher" (that exact phrase :) is good for a year.

Working it out..

So now consider; $100 per year.. thats what, $8/month? Thats a hell of a lot better than $30 a month, but you don't get as much of course. Hence why this is a fantastic 'batphone' emergency plan, or for people who don't yak a lot.

You can pick from a series of plans, but in this case for an emergency phone for someone I selected .. 25c/min for the first 5 mins of a call, then 15c/min thereafter. Not too bad. All told we could say the $100 will get about 400 minutes of airtime on short calls, or possible maybe 500 minutes if it goes awhile. No system access fee, no weird taxes, no paying for features..

I mean, $8/month for cell phone. Nice.

[ Category: / technology / mobile ] [link] [Comments]

Gaming: Warhammer Online Beta after 2 hours
Tue, 09 Sep 2008

Used to be gamers meant PC gamers. And PC games had Boss Keys, since a lot of people didn't have computers at home and played games at work, and needed to hit a key that would pretend to be Excel^h^h^h^h^hVisicalc real fast. Then later games had a Boss Key just for fun. And now they don't at all (sniff), and now people play games on PCs and consoles. But apparently mostly consoles, unless its Civilization, a FPS shooter, or .. MMORPGs. And with 10-odd million or more World of Warcraft players PC gaming will never die. So instead the question becomes - with each new MMORPG fantasy game, will it take over, or be another roadbump for the almighty WoW?

Will this be Failhammer Online? or Winhammer? Can Warhammer Online, Age of Reckoning ("WAR") survive?

I was going to write up a one para summary for some friends, but then it turned into this monstrosity and so I'm posting it. Sorry :)

NOTE: : My play was very low level, and in beta; the higher level PVP with city-capturing and so on sounds really great, but I didn't touch any of that. The lower levels are more mundane.. so read on.

The next WoW expansion is due in just a month or two, and simply nothing will be displacing that game anytime soon; its just too big. Well, until the next Blizzard game comes out, right? So with them showing no mercy on the marketplace, any new games had better stand on their own at launch -- a tough feet against something thats been around and under constant development for half a decade. (Witness Age of Conan, which simply seemed like a beta they wanted to charge monthly for. These games are hard to make.)

Now, before I get started, let me just say .. as an old timer table top gamer, I know that Warcraft rips off Warhammer in feel and art, and I know that Warcraft was even going to be a Warhammer game way back in the day. So yes to those fanboys, I get it, WAR looks like WoW, but its really the other way around. So I won't talk about that. And Blizzard better not, since they stole their gameplay from Everquest, and their art from Warhammer. What they did do, was evolve the gameplay, and refine it down to be the best and most addicting parts of that gameplay.

Anyway, I played the open beta WAR for a couple hours last night, and thought I'd lay down some impressions.

It will beg comparison to WoW at every opportunity, since it feels and plays like WoW. WoW adopted much of Everquests gameplay, and WAR adopts much of WoWs; economicly it can't be a bad thing, but it is a tired old convention. Auto-attack and 1-2-3-win. But fine, it certainly makes it easy on new players, and makes it very eay for WoW players to move to WAR -- you're 'at home' pretty quickly.

So let me say right off -- WAR, after 2 hours, seems to be about 80% WoW, with innovation at the end of each thread. ie: You can look at world PVE, mission PVE, world PVP, PVP minigames, and so on.. in each area they've done similar to WoW, but then improved on the formula; tried to involve the players more, and make it more about the ongoing war, and tie things together more. I think this is not a half bad strategy.

For an about-to-launch MMORPG, this looks pretty pollished. Most every other game in this field has launched terribly with crashes, people unable to log in and bugsbugsbugs.. and we'll see with WAR - but if the Beta is anything to go by, it looks pretty solid; they're building a foundation using proven ideas, and adding some really good stuff, and throwing it out there. Better than starting on some really rickety buggy mess (I'm looking at you Conan.)

But you better like auto-attack, and 1-2-3-win gameplay!

Population

As a PVP-interested player, I naturally went to Horde in WoW. I love Lord of the Rings of _course_, and even sine good old high fantasy novel tripe. But theres just no way I can take anything seriosuly as a goofy floppy eared elf. This isn't Civilization or Sim city; when I go into a game with "war" in the title, I want to tear. it. up. and wreck some opponents. So when you start in on World of Warcraft, and you firts mission is to murder 10 ducks, it rather scrubs the brunt off. Anyway, I just wanted to note that in WoW the servers as I understand it are 60-70% Alliance (humans/elves/dwarves/etc) and 30-40% Horde (orcs, tauren, trolls, undead, that sort.) At least my server was. (And for the high and mighty, in WoW lore the alliance is not all good, and the horde is generally fighting the good fight, not a bunch of evil mugs.)

So I found it a little odd that in WAR Beta (note the BETA), the populations seemed skewed to Destruction; the Chaos side was really heavy and the elves and so on were much fewer. Perhaps this will flip when it goes fully public and LEgolas37 can sign up, but we'll see.

I generaly like when there is an overall high population, and I'm on the low population side of it; it gives you the common underdog-wants-to-win feel, but it also means when you go hunting there will be lots of opponents (and usually clumps of them that outnumber your hunting party); it also means for PVP minigames you queue up and get into a game fast; the larger side sometimes has to wait, since there are fewer opponents to get into a match.

I still can't play the Order side, its just not me; so I can only hope all those LEgolases will fill in, so I have someone to beat up.

Orcapult

So I created a Greenskin Shaman (damage and healing combination) and ran around for a minute; it is obvious that even for the PVE (player versus environment.. the AI computer monsters) they are trying to keep the "at war" feal of it all; your missions are usually things that, although the same structure as WoW, at least are war oriented. Fetch the weapons, take them to buddyboy. Theres also PVP missions, right off, and thats huge. Anyway, I ran around for a few minutes to see what things looked like, and found catapults.. always a good sign; when I activated one, I found out it was an Orcapult, and it fired my character way up and over and onto an 'enemy' wall where the Stuff was Going On. It was PVE stuff mind you, but thats a great way to start a game, as a level 1 newbie. Running round, shot through the air, and into the action. Nice. Of course I was confused now, didn't know where I was or barely how to play, and surrounded by enemies... but the UI is like WoW, so I was able to take them down pretty easily.

A note on zones; you start, as in WoW, in a zone where you can turn on or off that you can be attacked by other real (enemy) players. ie: By default you cannot be PVP killed (ganked!). Naturally I turned the "please gank me" flag on right away. Bring it! So the newbie area is optional PVP, and some areas are always PVP. And some quests will take you from optional PVP to always PVP and require you to nail the enemy, if you take those quests. Slick. But if you're not a PVP person, you'll be fine I think.

Questing, leveling, experience.. PVE, or PVP? Achievements?

In WoW, you will do your levelling in PVE -- either world quests, or dungeon quests and romps. Classic, refined and addicive.. but tired and nolonger new. Thats fine, classic makes it always good.. but you can burn out on this stuff. And for me, I like to PVP (player versus player) a lot more than hunt down squirrels to kill. It is important to have choices, and in WAR they've done a great job of it.

You have the usual PVE world quests; you also have Tome quests, which are like achievements (the Tome itself is like a help guide, with details about everything you've seen or done or have to do, and logging things you've completed and so on.) You have hybrid quests where you do world quest things, but also have to engage the PVP enemy; you have PVE "public quests" which are like scripted events that repeat in certain areas of the map, so as you stumble across them you get swept up in a mini-boss event with everyone else (and NPCs) in the area. And you have PVP ("RVR", realm versus realm) quests and achievements.

Its rather a lot to take in when you first sign it, but after walking around it sinks in. What they've managed is to offer a PVE levelling system, a PVP levelling system, and a hybrid; you can mix and match. From what I've read, you can level up from start to finish all the way on PVP if you like, or you can PVE it, or whatever. Nice.

From my limited experience, it seems to have potential. Note than my character is very low level so I've only just barely scratched the surface, and I know things get bigger as you level up. The PVP at low level is essentially capture several flags and hold them material, but later it gets bigger and better. Thats okay.

I mean, I did a couple PVE quests right off, since those quest-givers were obvious and right there; go kill 2 of this, collect 2 of that, and go meet this other fella; okay, but I'm sort of bored of that.. did that a few years ago with WoW. But as I wandered around I got some small experience from opening up new areas.. cool; I got some experience for doing a few quests and actions - achievements; cool; wandered into an area and it turned out to be a public quest, and got to do a multi-wave mini-boss event, with experience all along the way. Cool! And lastly, I stumbled across the battle-master who signed me up to the PVP minigame for newbies; and there too was experience, when you kill players, or support others doing so; achievements came up as I got a series of critical hits in a row or did this or thats. And big big experience form the PVP minigame. I mean, it was by far the most experience that my character picked up, and I got a couple levels there. From a few 'battlegrounds' in WoW speak.

Nice. Thats what I'm talking about.

Naturally I didn't try crafting or auctioning on the market or anything else; was only a couple hours. But from what I can see..

It's a lot like WoW; thats a let down on the one hand, but it does make it 'easy' to start into

They've added a lot that makes the EQ/WoW formula better. Theres more action faster, you can get into the 'war' easily, and the PVP minigames are right there. Theres a little world PVP if you dig for it right away, but that comes a bit later.

Overall I think they really have a chance with this one. I'm just not sure if I'm ready for another auto-attack game, but I'm definately going to give it a shot.

n008 - forgive me ;)

[ Category: / entertainment / gaming / pc / mmorpg ] [link] [Comments]

Gaming: Techradar interviews me about homebrew and commercial game development on the upcoming GP2X Wiz
Thu, 04 Sep 2008

Short news piece
Full interview

Looks like a number of things were editted out (which is fine, I ramble a lot), but I had hoped one comment would slip through; I'll paste it verbatim here. (Maybe down the road I will paste the whole of the interview, but this is for them so they can have it for awhile before I post anything.) 

# 5. A lot of people would suggest
# that the GP2X:Wiz will once again be a console very popular with those
# who use emulators or pirate games, and won't actually be interested in
# a dedicated software base. How would you respond to such a statement?

        I must nit on your question; I wouldn't suggest that previous GPH
machines have been popular with those who pirate games; emulation and
homebrew yes, but piracy of published GP titles has always been _Very_
frowned upon in the community; mentioning it will get you banned from the
various websites, and discussing even how to crack the DRM on GP32 cards
was a hushhush secret affair so the 'newbs' wouldn't catch wind of it. I
expect the same for Wiz games -- with such a tight community the publc is
protective of their developers, and knows they and GPH live or die on the
economy of it all.

        If you're suggesting emulation itself thrives on pirating games
then I can only say that they are not one and the same -- ask me another
day if you'd like my essay on it but suffice to say you can enjoy
emulation to a large extent very much without breaking any laws.

        Anyway, ranting aside --

Youch, looks like my fear for this came to life - the piece got picked up (which is good) on other sites and affiliates, but for some the spirit got lost; when boiling down many of the words it has gotten turned into a "Jeff thinks its a failure" piece. That isn't what I had intended at all - its a homebrew machine - its not going to take on the PSP and probably isn't meant to. they're working up for that fight, but this isn't the time. Its like saying a bicycle isn't going to take on a car... we know that. Its fine and it doesn't suggest bicycles suck. *sigh* See, I did say.. 

        The Wiz will be enormously popular for emulation and homebrew
fans, and I expect people will buy a title or two of commercialware if it
is priced well, and is priced to the quality. Prices have been climbing in
gaming arenas, but as we can see with Apple's iTunes App Store .. keeping
prices modest can really boost the numbers.  Now, remember there are
multiple sides to economics -- on the one, you want to make people smile,
and enjoy your title, and keeping prices low does that.. and gets the
title out to more hands for more smiles. But accountants will be quick to
point out that if you half the price and sell 2.5 the quantity, you still
are ahead.. so karma, and profits. The trick is finding the balance.

        So I do believe there is a market, but I don't expect its a huge
one.

        I've never seen statistics for sales for the previous GPH
machines, but from the forums we do see people buying the games; and if no
one bought any, Play Asia and so on wouldn't have kept stocking them
right?

Another piece that got cut out; I know its a really lame analogy, but its my lame analogy. I've used it in a dozen interviews over the years, and it always gets cut. They know it sucks, but damnit, my quest on earth is to have someone publish my lame analogies :) 

        For a decade I've been telling people my theory -- if you go to
the supermarket and look in the butter aisle you'll see a dozen brands of
butter; sure, most people buy the top 3 brands, but theres room for a
dozen. Getting into the top tier is exponentially hard, but getting on the
shelf at all.. thats doable; hard, but doable. Theres no shame in being
#10 out of a hundred products, as #10 gets on the shelf. Some might call
it bottom feeding, but those of us working our tails to the bone 80 hours
a week like starving musicians - just to get onto the tiniest edge of a
shelf against the big guys.. we call it survival, fighting the good fight.

        This is how Quake mod teams suddenly end up being game developers
themselves; ten years of bottom feeding and finally getting their break.

        GPH was a nobody with the GP32, and they're getting more known
with their increased Linux support on the GP2X series; they're still a
nobody, but they're less a nobody. Slashdot posts about them now, but
thats a logn way from pretending Sony will take notice. (I don't know how
big a name they are in Korea. Perhaps I am woefully unaware!)

[ Category: / entertainment / gaming ] [link] [Comments]