You are currently viewing Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays, Live Long and Prosper

Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays, Live Long and Prosper

  • Post author:
  • Post category:Real Life

We're taking the day off from blogging and gaming to enjoy time with family, but wanted to make sure we wished all of your who celebrate a very Merry Christmas. If you don't celebrate, then stay warm and have a great start to your work week.

More...

Every year we like to make mention of our cute little Nintendo Christmas Tree with homemade ornaments. Graev slaved away back in 2011 carving each of these by hand out of foamcore board. Affixing them with glitter and attaching the images was a real pain. Have any cool video game related holiday decor? We'd love some inspiration for something new.

Behold, Nintendo Tree.

"Nintendo Tree, Nintendo Tree, How Flammable You Must Be!"​

Nintendo Christmas Tree

From our family to yours, we hope you have a happy and peaceful holiday.

Here, have a picture of a Lalafell. 

PS: Can you name the race, class, and game from the top image? Bonus points if you know the year I took the image.

  • Merry Christmas! Jenks beat me to it but yes, it’s gibberlings from Allods (a highly under-rated MMORPG which I really must have another run at). I wouldn’t have remembered the class though, even though I also played an Animist in beta, if I remember right.

    You played beta and quit in what was, I think, the first of your sequence of fallings-out with various MMOs, over some monetization or game mechanics thing that was a big deal at the time. Did it have something to do with perfume? Or candles?

    Anyway, you only played in beta (possibly briefly after launch? Not sure about that) and Allods launched in October 2010, so the screenshot must come from that year.

    • Allods was a really interesting game completely ruined by it’s horrendous cash shop. You could literally purchase huge percentage increases to your defense and damage with runes. I’m talking a full 100% over someone who didn’t spend large amounts of money. I remember doing a battleground and watching a warrior run around and single-handedly wipe out our entire team, repeatedly. We literally couldn’t do anything to him. It was hot garbage.

      Three friends from work got really into the game for a couple years. I watched one of them spend roughly $8,000 on the game during that time. The other two spent less but I’m willing to wager it was a few thousand between the two of them. It was then I realized the lure of a cash shop, particularly for people who have more money than free time.

      I think the game would’ve done much better if it had launched with a subscription model. They added one later but it was too late. The subscription server is a total ghost town as people have far too much invested to leave the cash shop server. It’s a real shame. Allods had a lot going for it. The Astral and ship mechanics were pretty dang cool.

      2010 eh? Wow, I’ve been reading this blog for a long time. Keen’s sentiments and gaming habits often mirror my own. It’s the only gaming blog I’ve consistently followed (I do check in on yours from time to time as well).

      In any case, hope everyone is having a good holiday. I’m battling the flu. It’s looking like I might survive, maybe…

      • I fought the flu stuff two weeks before xmas. So glad that was out of the way in time. Feel better man.

        That screenshot was from 2009 (I cropped out the beta stamp on it), but the game was played by us over the 2009-2010 year. Such a sad end to what was a decent game sans-cashshop.

    • I played in alpha and beta for like 6ish months, then played for a few months after launch. The cash shop wasn’t just pay to win — it was outright abusive. One of the worst in the history of MMO cash shop blunders.

      The year was 2009 in the screenshot. 🙂

  • Those allods publishers where soooo greedy when the game caught on.
    It was so bad they destroyed the good will of the players to the point the game population just dwindled.

    It was nothing special, but it was the first f2p mmorpg that somewhat resembled wow and thats why it drew attention. And yes it had some fresh ideas, but by the time your high enough lvl to experience the player owned spaceships you would have stopped playing.

    There was this strange buy tokens to spawn on dead cashshop system in place.
    At least it let me experience a few unique classes, but in the end i said f it and left.
    That and they also would not accept my payments.

    I did not like the way pvp was handled either. The game also felt unfinished.

    • Sadly they were greedy before it caught on, and then went outright criminal after that.

      The entire alpha/beta was free of any cash shop crap. It was awesome. Then the cash shop came in right at launch and took us all by surprise by just how bad it was. We obviously expected some level of P2W from gPotato, but what they did was abusive.

      Really neat ideas that, to this day, really haven’t been emulated.

  • Such a shame what happened to Allods Online. A very promising, unique game that was pretty much buried the second they introduced the cash shop. It’s a shame it never really made the front page on gaming sites to show what gaming companies can do to make your play a miserable nightmare.