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I saw a tweet last night suggesting that some of the cyber attacks on game systems (Eve, WoW, Sony’s SOE, etc.) may be an effort to combat political apathy. While this is an interesting theory and I can see that members of the hacktivist groups might think that if they turn off games that users might stop playing games and pay attention to the political landscape.
I think this strategy is likely to backfire. Most gamers aren’t going to say, “Oh I can’t get to my realm on raid night, so I think I’ll flip on FoxNews/CNN/MSNBC and see what’s going on in the world.” Just ask a parent how well it goes when you turn off the PS3/XBox/Computer and tell your child to go outside and play. Most kids go grumbling under their breath and sit outside as directed. They don’t rush off into the sunshine happy to be outside and freed from their electronic master.
Many of the gamers may be sympathetic the hacktivists ideals. Most gamers don’t care about the Senate, or banks, or big companies being hacked. I’ve heard students of mine say things like, “yeah hack those fat cats” –or– “those places can afford security so it serves them right”
When the PSN attack went public the comments changed dramatically. People were upset that their entertainment services were being interrupted.
I think continued attacks on games will only serve to fuel the public outcry to stop the groups. Many people who may be sympathetic to hacktivist ideals will be turned into proponents of the system.
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The first thing new French players see in the Burning Seas is a party. The good times end almost immediately as pirates crash and shoot your captain. You dash outside to fight off more scoundrels. This is a really good way to teach players how to fight. Each opponent arrives and paitently waits for you to read the pop up teaching you how to swing your sword or shoot your pistol. After you read the text box and then press the right button, you swing your sword and kill the target. After you dispatch enough of these slow witted ruffians you run off to the long boat to repeat the process on a ship in a nice little sheltered harbor.
Once you run through the fighting and sailing demo missions you return to you dying captain and he sends you off into the world…
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In researching the PotBS game I read that the online installer was better (more up to date) than the off the shelf CD, so I opted to download the game; it’s 7 gigabytes and took me the better part of a day to get downloaded and installed.
There are two servers left. According to wikipedia the servers have been getting merged, probably as the player base shrinks. That makes me a little nervous that the game may go away, but Sony Online Entertainment has kept Galaxies and EQ around for a long time so I’m hopeful that PotBS will remain playable for a while longer. One of the two has EU-EN after its name. My guess is that is for Europeans who speak english. I was a bit concerned when I signed on to the Antigua server and saw a great deal of french in the chat channel, but all the logs, interface and NPCs are in english.
The character customization screen is busy, lots of character features and clothing to select from and several items can be custom colored. It took some time to scroll through all the options and get just the right shade of blues for my French naval officer character.
The PotBS wiki has some good info about what each of the classes do and I read through them all to get a feel for what would be a good starting character. My play style is DPS in almost all MMOs that I play, so I figured start with what I know 🙂
After i got my guy built and dressed appropriately I was off to the noob valley for Frenchies…
