the ballad of trab

The Daily Grind: Should MMOs have enforced naming standards?

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For some players, “enter a name for your character” might as well read “insert the best joke you can within the character limit.” As a younger soul, this bothered me, because I’m pretty sure no one in Tyria would name their children “Valkilmer Sucks” or “Chowder Head,” but I would still have to see that in Guild Wars. I wanted strict naming enforcement, darn it!

Now that I’m older, I think younger me is a well-intentioned nincompoop. I have characters with names who do not adhere to strict naming conventions, and while those characters each have elaborate lore explanations for why they’ve got odd names, it doesn’t change the fact I would need to rename at least a couple of my Final Fantasy XIV characters. And that’s ignoring that some of my favorite names on that game include characters like “Carfullof Whiteboys,” “Viewing Catscene,” and my personal favorite, “Combyo Beard.”

Of course, some companies don’t care too much about providing name standards in the first place, so while “Samlikesham” doesn’t look like a traditional Night Elf name I can’t really say it isn’t. What do you think, readers? Should MMOs have enforced naming standards?

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The Division is hosting a free weekend for PC players starting today

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Let’s introduce you to Trab. Trab is a PC gamer who really enjoys shooting things, so he’s looking forward to some other shooter that recently released on consoles, with a PC release coming later. What is Trab going to do for this weekend? Perhaps he’s going to jump in and play The Division’s free weekend, which is happening this weekend from September 14th through the 17th. There’s lots of stuff to shoot there, and Trab won’t have to wait for a later PC release.

If you’re in the same boat as Trab or just want to try before you buy the game, you can start pre-loading the game now, so you’ll be all charged up when the free weekend kicks off. Your progress will be saved if you buy the game, and there’s even a 60% discount if you buy from Ubisoft directly during the free weekend. That seems like a pretty good deal for anyone with a need to shoot something on PC.

Source: Steam page

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WildStar’s Destination Arcterra arrives on March 30th

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Have you eagerly awaited the chance to venture into the coldest parts of Nexus? You only need to wait a couple more days. WildStar‘s Destination Arcterra patch is arriving on March 30th, complete with the eponymous new zone and a variety of content therein. Much of it will probably be snow-related, so you should prepare yourself for the puns about “chilling out” now.

But what about your friend Trab, who refuses to get excited about anything without video footage to back up its existence? Fear not, you can get Trab excited as well; just show him the patch trailer awaiting just below. You are, of course, welcome to watch the video yourself and not tell Trab about it.

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Heroes of the Storm adds recruit-a-friend rewards

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Sometimes you put up with a lot from your friends, and sometimes they have to put up with something for you. After all, you know that some of your friends don’t really care for the MOBA genre, so you don’t mention your obsession with Heroes of the Storm. But now there’s a whole recruit-a-friend thing available, and it has an exclusive mount. So that means it’s time to bite the bullet and call up the handful of friends you have who could be convinced to play the game until you get the mount.

If you’re in that position, at least you’re not one of the folks who’ve already recruited everyone they know and can no longer benefit from it. Game Director Dustin Browder apologized to them via Twitter:

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Tree of Savior kicks off open beta in Korea on December 17th

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Let’s say you have a friend named Trab. You think that Trab would really like Tree of Savior, but he won’t listen to you talk about it. Every time you try to mention it, he flings a can of moustache wax at your face and proudly declares that he doesn’t remember the name of any game not in open testing in Korea.

Trab is a terrible friend. But at least on December 17th, he’ll have to listen to you, because that’s when Tree of Savior is hitting open testing.

Along with the generally open nature of an open beta, the new phase of testing brings a level cap of 280, several new jobs for sufficiently advanced players, new starting areas, new quests, and all sorts of other new bits and bobs to explore. You can check out a trailer for the open beta just below.

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