Episode 368: Black Friday Approaches

As Black Friday approaches, Jonah and Paul discuss this week’s news after an absence. No Devin this week, as well as no Gaming Flashback or Gaming History. Paul loses it on the last news item, too.

As for the news:

  • Just Cause 3 announced for PC, PS4, and Xbox One in 2015
  • Nintendo talks third party, holiday strategy
  • Dev: It’s tougher to develop for kids than core gamers
  • Intel resumes advertising with Gamasutra
  • Xbox One sales triple following $349 promotion
  • World of Warcraft hit with DDoS attack as new expansion launches
  • Carbine: Redundancies are “part of game development”

The Question of the Week: “When did you first start buying games digitally?”

0 thoughts on “Episode 368: Black Friday Approaches”

  1. Wow Paul really let loose with that last episode. I agree with him that I’m tired of the whole Gamergate drama.

    I am hesitant to get into the whole SJW issue since it’s a sensitive topic. Suffice to say that they generally are a oversensitive, zealous and fanatical crusaders looking for a fight where there is none or “Making a mountain out of a mole hill”.

    A good example that doesn’t relate to Gamergate is the recent landing of a satellite on a comet by Dr. Matt Taylor. Not only did he mange the amazing task of getting the satellite to hit it’s target but we have amazing scientific data from that satellite. The next best thing to finding actual life forms, we found molecules, building blocks of life. We could be able to soon prove that life exists out in space, but what do we focus on? His fucking shirt. He’s wearing a shirt, with women (not naked) on it, made by his female friend as a birthday present, and he wore it to show his appreciation. Instead he was bullied into thinking that his shirt was a bigger grievous sin then his history making accomplishment.

    So way to go SJW you’ve claimed another victory and shown why Alien life shouldn’t visit our planet.

    @QotW; I’m not sure when the first digital purchase I made was. Probably going to go with the Wii and buying old NES games on it. Then Minecraft, PSn games, Xbox and Steam/GoG on computer. It started as a trickle and turned into a landslide of just getting Digital only. I love not having to worry about physical media getting damaged or lost.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Related Post

Episode 462: Nerd RageEpisode 462: Nerd Rage

Jonah discusses his renewed views of Mass Effect: Andromeda after his long, long rant last week. It fits in with the theme of nerd rage in the news items, as well as some new games coming out. TJ and Scott talk about the games they’ve been enjoying in the past week as well, as the latter is burning through Pillars of Eternity so he can play Torment: Tides of Numenera and the eventual Pillars of Eternity II.

This week’s news includes:

  • Planescape: Torment 4K remaster comes out April 11
  • First Star Wars Battlefront 2 trailer dated for April
  • World of Warcraft has changed how enemies scale, and players are very angry
  • Destiny 2 officially announced, teasing the fall of The Last City

Let us know what you think.

Episode 354: E3 Swag Bag Part 2Episode 354: E3 Swag Bag Part 2

The E3 Swag Bag contest is still going on, while Paul, Jordan and Jonah discuss the latest in videogame industry news.

This week’s news includes:

  • Nintendo loses Wii patent lawsuit to Philips
  • PlayStation Now beta gets six new games, but those high prices remain
  • Crytek claims it’s doing fine, despite rumors
  • Oddworld: New ‘n’ Tasty heading to Xbox One with ID@Xbox
  • Google announces virtual reality app Cardboard

All this and Listener Feedback. The contest question is still up: “What was your biggest takeaway from E3?”

Trials of a World of Warcraft Player: Entry ThreeTrials of a World of Warcraft Player: Entry Three

“Gold Rush”

It’s amazing how economies thrive on virtual worlds like Azeroth. One can buy and sell wares at an auction house to bring in money and spend money. Unfortunately, on my return back to Azeroth after a large siesta from the virtual world, many things seem to have changed… it costs an arm and a leg for almost everything. Perhaps the Burning Crusade expansion has set a new level of cost?

Here’s the deal. If you’re a brand new World of Warcraft player, you’re going to find yourself having to harvest the materials of the world (known as “mats”) for yourself because the auction house is way too expensive for everyday items. Inflation is out of control, imagine going to the store to purchase a leather jacket for the price of a car. You’d go cold wouldn’t you?

Once upon a time things were different, “low-bee” items (items between 1 and 15 let’s say) were a reasonable price, usually in the silver range of money. Today, they’re weighted in gold. The concept of supply and demand is at work but how is it we can purchase the supply at such a high cost? Because we’ve got friends or other characters with a lot of unused cash!

With Burning Crusade we saw basic quests tossing around gold as if it were common place. A character would save up thousands of gold for mounts and then horde the gold as if it were precious until they realized it was nearly infinite in supply and would start passing it around their guild or to other low level characters in their account. The end result, a low level character can go into the auction house with 100 gold in hand and buy whatever they need for basic materials no matter the price.

The laws of supply and demand take on a whole new meaning when people buying have nearly infinate supplies of cash. For me, I’ve decided to purchase some materials while “grinding” for others because they’re just too costly to purchase. However, I’ll do what needs to be done to also exploit the high prices when selling items back to the auction house and contribute to the over-inflated economies.

Perhaps, over time, Blizzard will create a platinum piece to replace the common nature of the gold as it depreciates in value. Although that’s said more in jest, it’s unfortunate that brand new gamers to this MMORPG won’t be able to take full advantage of the auction house as they could years ago with the influx in gold deposits.