My black list:

SoE - Have made some great games and ruined them.  Feel that thier games should be sold off and SoE closed down.

Blizzard - For tieing everything into battle.net and facebook.  Major hacking risk from my point of view.

Funcom - For releasing Age of Connan with only the first 20 levels of the game mostly done and rest of game not completed or there.

Quicksilver - Master of Orion III  game was so bad that they dropped it completly within 30 days of release.

Sony - For thier new EULA where you have to give up your right to sue them or be baned from playing.

Very grave thoughts about playing any game that auto ties you into facebook.

I would have to go with SWG pre CU/NEG or better yet before the changes during beta where the game was more like Myst with clues built into the game for the path to unlock jedi.  At one time just after live launch SOE said they were tracking some 25K things for each toon.

One thing I did not like about SWG was how SOE ended up doing path to unlock jedi after doing about 4 changes to the unlock path.

From day one, playing a dancer on the old server Lowca and all the friends I made there.

Second was the day I changed the game by posting on the SoE forum that one of the things that was working to help track quests to unlock jedia was based on the color of your trainers eyes on the space station.  The next day they put in the boxes with the red blinking lights at the the training space station and changed to what planet you could go to after you had completed the training part of the space station.

There are some uses for MMOs by the DoD.  X-plane for flying missions.  Intel on what the bad guys are doing, passing messages, how to set up underground nets.

If you have a large screen tv, save the cost of a monitor by connecting whatever computer you build/buy to it.

Since they fixed the paragon class at  level one by adding an extra sword you can take as a reward in first quest.  I have been having fun with paragon with all the skill points you can put into it and extra bonus skill points in riftblades.

For mage type every skill point you can in fire with elemental on the bonus side for the earth elemental to help take the agro off you.

I have been using an 60 inch DLP TV as a monitor  and am enjoying it.  Only problem for me right now is that I have upgraded computer to 2 GTX 580s in SLI and am unable to change the screen size in either the Nvidia or windows control panels.

For those of you thinking about buying an new tv to use as an monitor I would say to get one that is 3d ready so you can enjoy 3d gaming and movies with it.

Gamestop has 1 March 2011 as Rift release date for the past week.

Gamestop web site is showing 1 March 2011 as release date for Rift in thier adds for it.

For me the worst PC game was Masters of Orion III (Moo 3).

Game maker Quicksilver let only 25 gamers in to beta test it .

The game was so bad that Quicksilver took the web site for it down within a month of it's release.

Duelkore

Gamestop has Rift release date listed as 03/01/2011.

Here are some things I would have liked to seen done way back then.

1.  Had the jedi unlock system ready and in beta game, so they could have tested and fixed it before the game went live, not many months after the game went live.   (Also would have been no need for holocons and the many changes they made on the fly in how to unlock it.)

2.  Had fixed the bugs in game during the pre-CU.  (think some of the beta / early live bugs are still in the game.

3.  Had left the game play alone before they made all the changes to the game about a week before the game went live.

For me the most fun was trying to figure out how the jedi unlock worked.  In some ways the game was alot like Myst, again before they made all the in beta changes.

Some things I found and was posting on the offical board before they went and changed everything by putting the boxes with red flashing lights in first room of starting space station and send new players to other worlds than those at start.

a. In starter space station the color of the trainers eyes was a clue to your chosen skill path, also items on the console and table next to them had clues for you to follow.

b. flags and banners in front of buildings had clues in thier colors, designs and background textures. (dancers had blue as main color if you started on Nabu.)  One such was dancer quest to go dance in Nabu palace, banner center front had dancer action key 4 on it,  go inside to sentent/ball room and dance the night away using the dance #4 key.

c. On plantes again trainer eye colors and tables next to them had clues.  Tables could be found in most buildings that had blows of fruit and water glasses on them.

d. In main city on Nabu, when you was entering weapon shop build was weapons mounted on wall with flashing blue lights.  Back in weapon trainer room was yellow flashing lights and some weapons had a red tint to their egdes.

e. Areas in cities where you had fighting quests had red lights for street lights.  Blue lights for non-combat /research areas.

As a dancer starting on Nabu at the time, these were some of the things that made the game fun for me, as we where busy trying to learn how to unlock something that unknown to us was in the game at that time.  Plus the fun of providing a non-combat skill buff for others in the cantines and just talking to others that came in to be buffed and making new friends that I find very lacking in todays games.

It would be interesting to see how good of a Star Trek game Blizzard could make.  Think I would take them over any other game making company out there right now.

Thank you Jon Wood for the artical, but I feel it does not go far enough in an very important area.  What are the legal areas involved with all of this.

The mess of legal laws from state to state, federal laws and regulations in the US.   Then the laws of other countries like China, the EU, Germany, Japan, and South Korea.  Each has their own laws on what can and can not be done.

One area that I can think of rigth off the top of my head is Funcon's Age of Conan where the retail box had DX10 printed on the system panel, yet it was many months after the game went live that Funcon put it in the game.  Was this false advertising under the law?  Many other companies say things about what is in thier games durning the PR run up to retail release, then do not put them in because of time or reasons.  How do they stand on legal grounds.

Your part on Cryptic's Star Trek Online close beta access flap is one very sharp point to look at.  Right or wrong, here we have an person acting as an officer for Cryptic on the Champions Online fourm board stating that those that bought lifetime and 6 month subscriptiions to Champions Oline would be the first ones into the Star Trek Online closed beta.   Then it was not until three days later that someone from the Star Trek Online team said no what he said was not correct I think on twitter.  Not on the main web pages or forums.   As it stands right now has any laws been broken?  Who can tail?  Is the way they have been handling it honorable, that is another question.  North Carolina has a law on the books where a person who feels that it is a matter of honor can challange another to meet them face to face on the Field of Honor in real life.  Last I heard if a person kills another on the Field of Honor they will spend four years in prision but nothing else can be done to them.

There are many other strange laws that effect the players as well.  Californa has a law passed in the early 90's about sending spam by the internet.  This is why some games put in an timer before you can send another ingame message.

SoE was going to let rouges pick other players pockets for money till it was pointed out to them that the US had just passed a law about using the internet to steal money.  One point is that the wording of the law makes no differance between real money or ingame money.  Needless to say SoE very quickly dropped the idea.   This law may also be needed to be used on persons who hack into game accounts and steal money from your game account, or the Eve bank account of a couple of years ago.

For those of you that like to PVP gank pepole, mid 90's South Korea passed a law making it illegal to kill the avitar of anyone under 18.  How many games with pvp in them now have player from all over the world playing in them.

All of this mess can give you many articals and keep both you and MMORPGs legal department very bussy digging up out of the way laws to report on.

Come 1 Dec 2009,  Atari and Cryptic may have no other legal choice but to ship it out the door to you on 2 Feb 2010.  Because of the new FTC rules that go into effect on that date.

Have fun,  I have just upgraded from an 37 inch monitor to a 60 inch Mitsubishi DPL TV for 3d work on my computer and I love it.

Only thing I might suggest is to wait till next year when the new 3d ready TVs hit the market so you can both watch TV and game in 3d.

EB Games / Gamestop web sites has the Star Trek Online pre-order shipping date listed as 2/02/10 for the last couple of weeks.

Just found this Associated Press note at WRAL.com in thier news/technology section.   Check your local news service to see if they have posted the full message for you to read.

"The FTC said Monday its commissioners voted  4-0 to approve the final Web guildlines which had been expected.  Violating the rules, which take effect Dec. 1, could bring fines up to $11,000 per violation.  Bloggers or advertisers also could face injunctions and be ordered to reimburse consumers for financial losses stemming from inappropriate product reviews."

I for one am looking forward to this new rule, just wish the fines were much, much higher, say in the million dallor range.  This should help to tone down all the new game hype that we are seeing now days of new games being released with parts not being in game they they are saying on the web and game boxes. Plus the over inflated reviewes that we have seen in the past that does not match what we find when we lay down our money to buy the reviewed game and play it.

But have fun looking for it and forming your own ideas about it.

As of today's Sept 19 patch I would have to say NO to it being solo friendly.  3 of my mid level 15 toons are being killed by 2 hechmen fights in MC.  Where yesterday they could kill them.  Do not know about level 5 to 14 toons in desert or Canada zones yet  but will say the only way to fight NPCs in MC zone as of today is to full 5 man group up.

The forum over at Champions Oline web site where buring hot about it till they took the web serevers down.

My worst was also part of my duty at the time.  A person was talking about mission related info in game back during first Desert Storm.  Turned him over to OSI and he is now serving an 20 year term.