Just a quick heads up to all of you who read and comment on Gawker sites (especially Kotaku fans here).

Their commenting system appears to have been compromised, so you folks may want to log onto your Kotaku accounts and change your passwords accordingly.

More info can be found on this link.

UPDATE: Over on Twitter, Arkenor reminded me that I’m the only person who can see the actual emails of people who comment on the blog, making most of this post utterly useless.

That said, feel free to ignore this post. *headdesk, followed by a facepalm*

Hi folks. It’s Victor Stillwater here with another bit of an update regarding commenting.

I just wanted to make an announcement regarding commenting again for those who haven’t read previous entries on the blog.

Now, all comments pass through me, and generally, I approve all the non-spam looking ones. There are, however, exceptions to this, and I do it more or less to make sure spam doesn’t come through or people don’t get fired.

What am I talking about? Basically, I look at the email addresses attached to the user names on comments, and if I find that a specific comment’s email address is remotely connected to a place of work or business, I don’t approve the comment.  This is to prevent potential spam from coming in from an email address I’ve never heard of, or to prevent people from getting reprimanded at work for using company resources to post on blogs.

To that end, please be careful what email address you’re logging in from. Better yet, make a Google, Yahoo, or Windows Live email account for personal use with a clearly non-spam looking email name.

These and other additional notes will be added to the blog rules and commenting guidelines page of the blog.

Thank you.

Some of you might have noticed that not all of your comments pop up immediately on the entries I’ve posted, even if you’re the same person. There’s a reason for that.

Basically, the filter on WordPress keeps a comment for me to view and approve or deny if there’s a different email attached to it. For instance, if the email you used on comment 1 is [email protected], and on your second comment, you have the same username but instead use [email protected], then I have to approve it first.

Thing is, because I don’t know if the second email used is a spammer/impersonator or not, I’m hesitant to put otherwise normal comments on the site because that might allow a spammer to keep posting here without issues.

To put everything down simply, please remember to keep your online persona when commenting the same, which means using a specific username and email address for every comment, to ensure that your comments come through, and also to ensure that you’re not a spammer. Thank you.

Pitrelli of Kill That Cheerleader alerted me to this just a few moments ago, so I want to send out some apologies now for anyone who was affected by it.

I was doing some cleaning up of the categories from my newbie days on this site, and was basically adding and removing categories as needed to sort of make it easier for people to search for specific entries.  Pitrelli told me that apparently, my RSS feed was affected as well, bumping up articles whose categories I edited back into circulation on the feed reader.

If anyone else has this problem, I want to say sorry for the inconvenience. It was not my intention to bork your feedreaders with older musings.

Moving forward though, I’m happy to say that thanks to some teaching from Elandarex, the category system has been streamlined somewhat, with some categories (such as console gaming titles) being turned into tags instead so as not to clutter the category system. MMOs will still have their own separate categories but, as a sort of redundancy, also have tags should, in the future, there be too many categories in that sphere. Prolific game series (Final Fantasy, Fallout, Resident Evil and Street Fighter so far) will have their own categories, but will have all iterations of the games in that particular category.

Once again, thank you for your time, and I hope you enjoy reading the entries here as much as Elandarex and I enjoy writing them. Cheers.

Instead of the usual punditry I come out with on a regular basis, I’m just going to link to three different things that grabbed my interest over the past hour or so of reading through RSS feeds, LJ friends lists, and my usual game-related haunts.

Feel free to react to any of the noted stuff in the comments, though my suggestion would be for you to go to the actual sites themselves and comment so as to spread the love.

HEADLINE 1: EQ2 Travel Revamp

Ysharros of Stylish Corpse has a rather lengthy description of the changes (read: Streamlining) that’s coming in a future patch for Everquest 2. It’s a great read, and basically boils down to fast, instant travel everywhere you want to go, if the current state of the changes is to make it live.

HEADLINE 2: A Sinful First Look at Fallout: New Vegas

Giant Bomb has a great piece up discussing the upcoming sequel in the ever-so-lovable post-apocalyptic RPG series Fallout. This one brings players back to the west coast, with players having more options to play the game as they see fit, in addition to enjoying tons of new killer weapons.

HEADLINE 3:  Fla. Student Allegedly Plants Fake Bomb in School

Not the smartest kid in school, I would say. In an attempt to become popular, some 18-year old kid plants a fake bomb, comprised of a game boy, a cellphone, and assorted wiring, in school. This obviously sets off a bomb scare, and now the kids got a felony charge on him.

Picture Found by Syp of Bio Break

Over here in the Philippines, it’s actually Monday already. While most people are at work, I’m doing something I love, which is working to make this humble blog a more exciting place.

To that end, there are, again, some new changes over here on Games and Geekery that you might want to know about. The most obvious one is, of course, the switch to a new theme. It has more space, and had almost all of the previous functions of the theme I was originally using, which made it a great fit for the blog.

Of course, since this is a free WordPress blog, it will probably look a bit similar from what already exists out in the blogosphere. To combat that, Elandarex used his wonderful Photoshop skills to create a new header for the site. This one has a very obvious retro theme, but we’re experimenting with different ideas to see if we can come up with a couple of headers that we can change every few months or so to spice things up.

Lastly, there’s one other change I’ve implemented here as a result of bringing Elandarex into Games and Geekery. From today onwards, I am accepting guest submissions regarding video games and other forms of geekery (a very broad statement for a reason) from other writers who may wish to get their thoughts out but do not necessarily want to maintain a blog of their own.

The backstory for this is simple: a friend of mine on Twitter wanted to repost something he wrote on the genre-specific topic of gaming, but didn’t find it to be a perfect fit for his personal blog. I offered my space and, well, the rest will be history once I put up the post. Expect the post to be up once I get some last minute details regarding the write-up.

In the meantime, if you find any bugs or weird looking shenanigans on the blog, please let me know so I can take a look at it and fix it if possible. Cheers!

Image Source: To Whom It May Concern

by Victor Stillwater

Hi folks,

Since Elandarex has posted his first write-up on the site, I thought to make an official announcement of my own.

Elandarex is going to be a part of Games and Geekery from here on out. You may know him from the Deeply Delving Dungeons blog, and due to his closing down his old haunt, I asked him if he’d like to keep on writing entries elsewhere, specifically over here. He accepted, and so I’ve been making little tweaks to the site for his arrival.

If you’ll check the sidebar, you’ll notice that I’ve changed some things. First off, the About Page now has information on both of us, in our own particular styles of making ourselves known. Second, Contact information for myself and Elandarex has been placed on the Contact Us! page. Third, I’ve also shortened my twitter feed to allow for some space to let Elandarex’s twitter feed go up as well.

Most importantly, we now have an issue regarding authorship. I’m currently looking for some way to announce which blogger is writing which specific article, but since I can’t find the WordPress option for that just yet (I’m a newb, yes), we’ll be putting Authorship bylines either before the start of the text, or at the end of the article. We’re still deciding what though, so please be patient.

In any event, that should allow Games and Geekery to get more excellent viewpoints, and I look forward to seeing what Elandarex has in store for all of us, myself included. Cheers!

NOTE: Stream of consciousness writing here folks, my apologies.

If you’ve been following the international news, it’s only been recently that coverage of Typhoon Ondoy (Internationally known as Ketsana) has been made known.

What news outlets probably won’t tell you is that we got a month’s worth of rainfall in under a day, and the Philippine drainage system couldn’t handle it, making the flooding not only dangerous in the immediate sense, but a carrier for all sorts of vile diseases and other stuff.

The above picture comes from a search I did, and that shot is taken directly in front of my school. While not indicated, what you don’t actually see from this top-down view is that the pedestrian overpass’ stairs are halfway submerged in that mucky water.

My friends are okay, as they were in a hotel when this all happened, but they’re worried for their families. Thank goodness I’m even able to get in touch with them through Plurk and facebook. Relief efforts are being coordinated partly through TV and radio, but also through the hundreds of people who have gone on facebook to spread the word about making donations.

For those handful of you who read the blog, maybe you can also lend some assistance. Donate to your national Red Cross for Philippine Flood Victim relief. We need everything from food and water, to blankets, medicines, and even rubber dinghy boats. A little bit can go a long way.

Last bit of info… if my intel is correct, there’s a second tropical storm heading towards the Philippines. Definitely not a good thing, as we’ve had more rain than our dams can handle. If they add wind into this second storm, we’re in for some serious hurting.

[youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XfWpVe7w3DA]

Note: Adapted from my original post on MMeOw.net.

Now that we’ve moved on from account management issues as a barrier to entry in MMOs, it’s time we talk about another important barrier to entry: the game mechanics surrounding the MMO you’re playing or trying out.

As a term, “game mechanics” has certain connotations, so let’s define the term for use in this article. In this particular article, “game mechanics” shall refer to both internal (in-game) and external (relating to the game) aspects of MMO that a player can perceive and possibly use but not directly influence or change.

One common factor among MMO enthusiasts is that each has his own set of needs and expectations when it comes to playing a game. Because they are needs and expectations, satisfaction from the player can be derived when those needs and expectations are met through either research of the game in question or actual play. These needs and expectations also change through time, sometimes necessitating either an internal change from the player or an external change in the type of game played.

What am I talking about? Let’s take a look at the game mechanics of a couple of MMOs I’ve been through and how they relate to player needs and expectations for further insight.

(more…)

[youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QZBn1e9pr2Q&hl=en&fs=1&rel=0]