News

An Aside | Read my Suvudu Cage Match!

By Aidan Moher March 5th, 2012

BLOODSHOT and THE ELFSTONES OF SHANNARA for Suvudu Cage MatchYep, it’s that time of year again. The 2012 Suvudu Cage Matches are live and, like the previous two years, I was lucky enough to be asked to contribute to the event. This time around, being just a bit of an old-school Terry Brooks fan, I was charged with pitting the Dagda Mor, Brooks’ demonic lord from The Elfstones of Shannara, against Cheshire Red, the slick vampire/thief from Cherie Priest’s Bloodshot and Hellbent.

Here’s a little taste:

Astride his Northland Bat, the Dagda Mor circled slowly above the human city, watching the girl. She lurked in the shadows, thinking herself hidden, but mere darkness could not hide her from the demon’s magic. The Dagda Mor gripped its Staff of Power in skeletal hands, feeling its magic throb like a living thing. The girl was a tool, a piece of the puzzle that he would use to finally acquire a magic that had eluded him for thousands of years–the only magic more powerful than his.

The demon watched the girl climb up the zig-zagging metal ladders and platforms, reaching the top of the building and then effortlessly leaping across the gap to the other. She took one quick glance around the rooftop, never looking towards the sky, then knelt before the door. In a moment, the door popped open and the girl disappeared inside. The Dagda Mor waited.

The moon had barely moved from its place in the sky when the girl re-appeared through the same door, quietly closing it behind her. The Demon dropped from its bat mount and plummeted to the alleyway below. It landed without and sound and melted into the shadows, waiting for the girl as she clambered expertly down the metal ladders.

Read the full Dagda Mor Vs. Cheshire Red cage match!

I’ve had the opportunity to spend time with both Brooks and Priest, so it was quite an honour to be able to assume two of their characters for this cage match. I hope I was able to do their characters some bit of justice.

But, what do you think? Who would win the fight? Or are such cage matches just a fanciful waste of time?

My previous cage matches:

2010

2011

Videogames

An Aside | My thoughts on the GAME OF THRONES MMORPG

By Aidan Moher March 2nd, 2012
Game of Thrones MMORPG screenshot

I blogged about this over at Suvudu, so head there for the details, but I just wanted to chime in here with some more detailed and persnickity thoughts about the recently announced MMORPG based on George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire.

The gist, from Venturebeat:

Martin and HBO spilled the news about the game last year, but Bigpoint hasn’t had a chance to show off its work until now. Bigpoint’s new web site for the game offers you the chance to sign up and “die for your house.”

Bigpoint grew big as a browser-based game publisher in Hamburg, Germany, but in the past couple of years it has expanded into the U.S. and moved its headquarters to San Francisco. The company will show a sneak peek of the game, a browser-based massively multiplayer online role-playing game (an MMORPG that doesn’t require a long download) at the upcoming Game Developers Conference next week in San Francisco.

The game will be set in the fictional medieval world of Westeros and its Seven Kingdoms, where summers can last for decades and winters can last a lifetime.

First of all, it’s nice to see Martin’s series continuing to get recognition and attention from the videogame world, but doesn’t he deserve better? The MMORPG is being developed by BigPoint, the illustrious developer of such legendary titles as Drakensang Online, Lord of Ultima and, most convincing of all, Zoomumba. Now, I know George has to eat, but wouldn’t it behoove him and Bantam Spectra to do a bit of quality control before licensing out the IP to just anyone? Is a browser-based MMORPG really the best fit for the series? And does this move to (probably) free-to-play browser-based model suggest that the Game of Thrones MMORPG will be adopting a more socially-driven nature (as seen in many of BigPoint’s other games), as opposed to a more solid, deeply considered structure like the other MMORPGs that gamers actually give a damn about? Why not look towards Turbine’s successful MMORPG adaptation of J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings for inspiration? At least BigPoint’s other browser-based MMORPGs look good, regardless of how they might play.
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