VR Chat Security Update Results in Mass Protests by Playerbase

 
By Bixyl Shuftan

In the past few years, VR Chat has enjoyed an increase in numbers. They've gone from 9,100 active users in February 2018, when the Newser gave a review, to 42,500 in December 2021 (link). These are numbers that have made it a true rival to Second Life in contrast to the various Opensim worlds. The world has gotten both praise and condemnation. Early in its history, it was documented that several players came to the aid of another who suffered an epileptic seizure (article). More recently, there were allegations that younger teen users were being "groomed" into sexual acts (article). 

This week however came a move by the development team that resulted in both pushback from many users plus fewer people getting online in the world. 

On Monday July 25, the developers announced a security update (link), the largest change being the installation of "Easy Anti-Cheat." "If you’ve played Apex Legends, Fortnite, Gears of War, Elden Ring, or many more," they stated, "you’ve seen Easy Anti-Cheat (EAC). EAC is the industry-leading anti-cheat service. It’s lightweight, effective, and privacy-focused. In short, for any game or platform looking to prevent malicious users from breaking the rules, it’s a powerful solution."

The reason for this security update, they stated, was because of problems with modified viewers being used to grief other users, "“Modified clients” are a large problem for VRChat in a variety of ways. Malicious modified clients allow users to attack and harass others, causing a huge amount of moderation issues. Even seemingly non-malicious modifications complicate the support and development of VRChat, and make it impossible for VRChat creators to work within the expected, documented bounds of VRChat."

The problem is, EAC will not just block harmful mods, but ones useful to players. Some help in avatars being more interactive. Some help enhance the experience, such as VRC-CC which allows closed-captioning for deaf players so they can see movies inworld. 

https://twitter.com/TheFoxipso/status/1551640725455982593

Apparently, there's been an "unspoken culture," as Alexandra Hall of Kotaku describes, of mods being tolerated "unless they flaunted their upgrades or otherwise caught moderators’ attention." The result has been a "thriving underground mod scene" that allowed players to enjoy the game in ways not intended by the developers and for disabled players to get around the platforms shortcomings many say the developers were slow to adress. Some were also made to help protect players from malicious mods, "oftentimes unofficial mods have been the only means by which to access certain features, ranging from support for exotic hardware like advanced trackers and networked sex toys to addressing accessibility concerns like closed captioning and text-to-speech. Also popular were mods that tried to protect against malicious 'crasher' avatars, mods that helped to increase framerates in the notoriously sluggish, Unity-based game, and mods that allowed avatar searching, a basic-seeming feature that VRChat still lacks."

The development team acknowledges there is a problem, "we hear you and see you saying that many of the modified client features that are being lost due to this are extremely important to you, or in some cases allow you to use VRChat at all, when in regards to modifications that added accessibility features that VRChat currently lacks." But are going ahead with it, "we are going to be releasing this update, and we do not have plans or intent to revert or roll it back." 

The result has been numerous complaints, including many angry ones, from a number of VR Chat's users. The Steam page was full of recent negative reviews. "The latest update introduced Easy Anti-Cheat which has turned the game into garbage," wrote a Yifrick, "This was an amazing social game but now the developers have gone and ???? on it and everyone who loved this game by including this spyware under the pretence of making the game 'safer' for users, when it does absolutely no such thing, and actively harms the community." "Many hours i played and some years on it," wrote an Appie_Dude, " but when I heard of the new update, no (I) am done, am out. ... the devs won't listen to people and go for the money now. You ruined a game, goodluck." "You literally just destroyed your community who heavily relys on mods for quality of life improvements since you are so slow to do it yourself," wrote a Smackdatmoney, "What a actual shame that you continued and STILL went through with it anyways even after massive community backlash. ... you've just became another one of those companies who see their own community as 'idiots who dont know what their talking about'. ..."

In one review by a Soulful, "there's not a lot to be said here about the state of VRC. I've had issues for a while, game has serious optimization issues for folks who play through virtual desktop, has pretty much no graphical optimization implemented in any capacity, atop of compounding problems with lack of communication, community engagement, and a huge lack of understanding with their userbase's needs and wants. I lived with these issues, in hopes that these features would be implemented sometime, having relied on modding and even Steam's own built in VR stuff to help with these problems, which has been a godsend for those times when there's more than a handful of folks around ... For a long while the VRC team either would ignore a lot of these posts of critique and even real complaints of issues, or directly missing the point of something being brought up to begin with, it was nothing new, now though they're showing their ugly heads when it comes to something as big as adding an anti cheat. Normally I'd be for them implementing something into the game to help with dealing with malicious users doing things like code injecting or script kiddy nonsense to harass and disrupt other people. (But) to destroy something as big and as fundamental as the modding community, the Steam community, and even just plain ol Meta/Quest users on Virtual Desktop ... outright shutting down all sorts of background apps and taking snapshots of your PC if it even suspects even a little bit of something 'suspicious' or 'malicious', and is already VERY well known for not playing well with lots of 3rd party software used in day to day services, including VR services, and from the statements they've been handing out, and lots of the other things going on with VRC itself lately in terms of monetization, it's very clear where they lie in terms of the future of their platform. And it's not to be user friendly, not to be community friendly, and definitely not to be true to the spirit of a social platform to push any envelopes in the VR industry."

Someone named Keith complained the update didn't really stop malicious users, writing, "EAC was defeated in less than 2 hours after it hit the Beta Branch. This means that any malicious actor who wants to continue to use mods to cause problems can do so unimpeded. ... even if EAC was a perfect anticheat with no way around it? That wouldn't stop 99% of crashers, rippers, and account hijackers. The VAST majority of those people utilize completely vanilla clients because VRChat's code is just that insecure. ... at the end of the day EAC is a pure negative. There isn't a single pro about its presence in VRC. It will only make the crashing and other issues worse as it strips people of community made defenses, it takes away many accessibility features disabled folk relied on to be able to participate, and without the community driven QOL options many people use, VRChat just becomes an inferior platform compared to other options."

In the past few days, upset users have "review bombed" VRChat. Its recent reviews were ranked "Overwhelmingly Negative."

"Disabled players are feeling the brunt of this update the most," stated an article from Eurogamer that appeared in senegalbgs.org, "They say they are now stuck with a game they cannot play, with no guidance on when the game will be made accessible to them and no guaranteed way of making sure their needs are being listened to. ... this is a huge setback, particularly considering the work that is going into accessibility options in high-profile games . They say they now find themselves stuck in an ecosystem that has taken away the tools that allow them to join in without providing a sufficient alternative."

Not everyone is complaining. Talking to Marusame, who started out in Second Life, but appears much more often in VRChat now, he stated he didn't use mods, "Most people are just (complaining) because they can no longer use mods that give you power like flying around, crashing people, messing with things like turning off mirrors or making things move around or generally being a nuisance. ... though this doesnt get rid of crasher avatars. Imagine if in Second Life someone could whip out an avatar and crash a sim?" She also thought people had plenty of time to get ready, "I've known they was gonna do something like this for MONTHS. I've hanged out with some of the devs and one works on security. ... so for me, this change didnt do much other than lobbies are filled with less crashers now and they are more chill. (It) reminds me of the Second Life Windlight UI thing where everyone said they'd go to Opensim because of it, and a month later everyone came back."

So what to do? There are calls not to get on VRChat for a week so the drop in numbers will get the attention of the development team. There are also calls for those who signed up for VRChat Plus, a $9.95 USD a month subscription service to cancel. 

I had a few words with Johnny Vulpine, who was "a longtime SL user and also a VRC user." He recommended using a couple alternative clients to get onto VRChat, Neos and ChilloutVR, "If you are looking for something similar to VRC where you can hop in, throw on or upload an avatar and go socialize. ChilloutVR might be more your speed. Like VRC, it's easy to get in and just go. Content creation is done outside of the game and uploaded in. If you are looking for something more like SL but in VR, I think you will love Neos. Neos is a VR social app just like VRC and Chillout. But like SL, it has a full range of building tools in-game, you have an in-game inventory which already comes stocked with some basic things. Or you can upload content built outside the game. I will add that the learning curve for Neos can be a bit daunting. BUT you do not need to learn every aspect of building and content creation to enjoy the game. There are already TONS of avatars (many of the same ones used in VRC) that you can pickup and use for free."

Marusame was less enthusiastic about the alternative clients, saying ChilloutVR was harder to use, "the api is fried, also the sdk is janky was harder to upload an avatar than vrchat especially to get material toggles and has a harsher public avatar upload review process." But went on to say they are "doing a lot of hiring so maybe they actually want to do something. Neos VR I hear is more complicated and you can build in world, very Second Lifey experience. But development is dead at the moment with people leaving and infighting."

So what are Second Life users thinking of this development? There was one meme of two sailors getting disciplined by their captain. One was a VRChat user, complaining this was cruel and unusual punishment. The other was a 16 year veteran of Second Life, who was taking things in stride, and looking to the VRChat user and asking, "First time?"

Erron Kelly in Venturebeat would comment that there was something about VRChat that reminded him of the early "Wild West" days of the Internet, which while offering an unexplored frontier also had bad guys such as trolls using racist language, "VRChat taking steps to sanitize that stuff? In the long run it’s probably good for the software. But every time the Old West gets settled it’s a little sad. That’s just me being nostalgic about how I grew up. The people losing access to genuine quality-of-life mods? They’ve really got something to complain about."

Sources: Vice, PC Gamer, Venturebeat, Steam, Eurogamer/Sengal, Kotaku 

Bixyl Shuftan
 

Game Review: Ripples

By Nydia Tungsten

Ripples is an ongoing adult visual novel. It is a sci-fi visual story that centers around the main character, an 18-year-old in his last year of high school. He reunites with his long-time friend Darci, a feisty little firecracker, who has feelings for him but needs to play the tough guy, unsure how to show him her softer side.

As they head to school together it starts out like any other day but then they meet the new high school queen, which immediately starts crap, Now the main character lost his mother when he was very young, leaving him with his father to raise, and life is good, until your father is killed in an accident at work, and he goes to an elderly woman to raise… but she wasn’t the nicest person… until she dies. THEN he is given to a long-term family friend. (Spoiler, she lives) Tiffany. She was always nice to you as you grew older, you spent time at her house before you lost your father and now you live with this beautiful woman and her daughter…… this should give you an idea of the many ways this game can go, then mix in a bit of intrigue and time travel and you get a hell of a story.

Okay okay, YES, there is plenty of sex, for those of you wanting to know about that, the animations and textures are some of the best I have seen.

I try and judge something like this on more than that to get my recommendation, there were times I was laughing my butt off. And there are Easter eggs everywhere.

 

There are a lot more but not as obvious and have to look for it and listen for it as for just a small part of the humor…

Let's not forget Tiffany

This is a really well-done visual novel the artwork is on point as well as the writing. This is a definite 8 out of 10 from me and I highly recommend it.

Don’t just take my word for it, let the main character tell you…

In short, I really enjoyed this game and don’t really mind that Bixyl is forcing me to play these perverted games. (Love ya Bix)

If you want to try it yourself you can find it here. BUT BE WARNED THIS LINK IS NSFW!!

https://jestur.itch.io/ripples

I hope you all found this informative as well as entertaining, and let me know if you try it and what YOU think about it.

It was great talking to all of you again and I am looking forward to our next time, but until then, as always,

GOOD GAMING TO YOU!

Nydia Tungsten
 

ARK: Fjordur

 
By Nydia Tungsten

I have been playing ARK pretty much since it came out in Beta. For the most part, I enjoy it, except when the devs started pandering strictly to the PvP crowd. Changing the game's mechanics almost destroyed the PvE players' enjoyment. I had left the game for a while until I learned that the modding community came to the PvE community's rescue, undoing everything the Devs tossed aside chasing the PvP demands. So I started playing again and enjoying it again. The best maps came from outside, and this is one of those maps: Fjordur.

It is a brand new map, as of this writing it is only maybe a week old, but it is packed with so much to explore, so much to lore. And the graphics seem like they have improved as well.

The other maps only have certain Dino’s for that map alone, but Fjord opens that door and brings in almost every animal, they probably have every animal I just hadn’t found the small ones yet as of this writing.

It is full of prime base areas not only to build in but move into as well. There are ruins both inside and outside you can take over, there are also houses, I found one abandoned village, the one I moved into the is very close to a pillar in case I need it

This Viking-looking building is where I am putting my workshop

But like I said there are more places you can build your own home or base or compound. I really can’t wait to see what some master builders will build in there, I can only imagine what Jazmare or Lomgren or Brandi or Snowy, (any of whom can build circles around me) will end up building once they decide to visit.

Let's talk about graphics, I don’t know if this map builder did some tweaking, but everything looks great! 

Here are a few pics just to emphasize that.

Those are just a few of the many I have.

There is a Viking theme to this map and it shows

I have found out there there are three more levels to this themed map, but you need to get “Ruin stones” to activate the teleporters to reach them.

This is the teleporter chamber that will take you to the other “Realms”

There are secrets hidden all over the map on each of the islands that you will find and have a blast exploring, I won’t give anything away because this is the type of map you want to explore yourself.

There is beauty here, but also death!

This map IS a bit more difficult to start on, but so far it is worth it.

But if you do want more hints and tips on where things are with more spoilers just hit youtube where you will find them all.

So until next time, GOOD GAMING TO YOU!

Nydia Tungsten
 

"The Great Wacky Race" on Rust

 
By Bixyl Shuftan

It's been about eight years since my friends and I first heard about the Survival MMO "Rust." It's gone a long ways since its early days in 2014 of dodging zombies and zombie animals on a circular road. The game was overhauled in 2015 to more or less it's current form, though has gotten numerous updates over time to tweak and add things such as hostile NPCs, new areas such as the scientist and bandit compounds, boats and diver gear, and more. But some things remain the same, such as the infamous chopper. And while the adage "never trust anyone on Rust" may be slightly exaggerated, it's still a good one to hold onto in the more vicious Player versus Player servers which aggressive players find it their mission to crack into any base they can, and wary players set up eleborate defenses that clobber anyone, hostile or frendly, within range. But not everyone wanting to play Rust wants to raid or deal with raiders. So there are numerous Player versus Environment servers for the more peaceful gamers.

Over the years, Nydia and her friends have had their share of adventures in Rust, notably on Nydia's Angel server when it's active. Recently when Nydia asked her group of Second Life friends on her Discord server what game they wanted to play together on, the majority chose Rust. Unfortunately, my computer has a hard time with the Rust, taking over an hour to access a server when it took just twenty minutes to download the game. So after a couple last visits to finish my last review, that meant I had to do little more than wish them well and know what was going on through Discord chatter and the occasional streamed session by a player, such as Brandi Streusel.

As I mentioned, the game has been continued to be tweaked and have things added. In the most recent update, driveable cars became an option. Vehicle cabs began appearing across the island, and players could either turn them to scrap or rebuild them. One could make a basic car to get around, or a truck to haul stuff. From the chatter and the streams I saw, my friends were having fun with them.

Then I heard some chatter about a race. And before long, it happened. I only heard scattered details, then Jasmine told me in her own words what happened at "The Wacky Races" as the race came to be called. Presumably it got it's name from the Hana-Barbera cartoon that first aired in the late 60s in which a number of zany characters competed in various cross-country races, with most giving an honest but competitive effort and Dick Dastardly always trying to cheat his way to victory (fun fact: Dick Dastardly almost won a couple races honestly, but blew it when he couldn't resist stopping to pose for a camera.or giving someone his autograph).

"Those little cars there are a blast to drive," Jasmine would tell me, "And if you can ramp them they get serious air time, to the point I worry if the server will ban me for fly hacking." Of the race, "Yeah the race literally started out as a silly idea I passed on to Skylark, a challenge to her to build a three engine, three-mod car, and had already figured it out and was curious to see if she could. At first she said it wasnt possible till I told her. And then the first and second of the rave cars was built. I was at my place, commandeered Umbras three-mod water tanker, and refit it to become the third racer. Then me and Umbra worked on his four-mod to make it the first four-mod racer.  The thing actually looked like a rolling cock, I at least thought it was funny

"Then I did a shout out to Nydia to get on the server cause I was up to shenanigans. She had NO clue what I had in mind. I used a three-mod that had been sitting out beside the road since the server was last wiped, made that one into yet another 3mod racer. (I then) grabbed some wood, scanned the map for a good start point and chose the Entrance to Bandit Camp. I let.everyone, know and that we would be racing along the rail line. If your wondering why we raced along the rail line is because the ground was reasonably flat and it eliminated all the curves that plagued the map."

"By the time everyone had arrived, I had made a proper starting point building. We had wait for the Patrol helicopter to leave.

"Nydia finally got logged in and was instructed to go by my vehicle bay and grab the car sitting there, and to hustle her *ss up. Her exact words if I recall was, "HOLY S**T!" Once she arrived, I explained the rules. Nobody was friendly during the race. It was a single lap around the map. First one back (would win) my hat, I liked that Snowman head hat, plus 1000 scrap.

"We lined up, and off ripping it up racing along the rails. I honestly think I hit every tree, and backed into the ones I missed. These cars moved soo fast the smallest bump or collision would send them barreling out of control. I somehow managed to get in the lead for the most of the map race, right up till a chicken, yes a chicken, walked out in front of me. I hit the bird and was flipped end over end, and landed in the trees and got stuck.

"Right as I got back on the rails, Nydia went flying passed me to take the lead and won the race. I came in second place. Umbra took third place. Nikki took 4th and Skylark came in last. Sky wasn't able.to control the car, leaving her to collide and tumble in the snow biome area. But we all stayed there cheering her on and finally sent Umbra looking for her. She was soo mad and I can understand why. Maybe by the time we have another Wacky Race she will mop the floor with us.

"There ya go Bix, your you a first hand account of the recent Wacky Race. Maybe next race I'll get Nydia to live stream it."

Snowy, who had a few pictures, was saying it wasn't too bad, "I was not all upset with the races. I thought the races were fun, but I was frustrated. I was getting no where fast."

It's going to be some time before I get back into Rust again. Recent events have not been kind to neither my wallet or amount of gaming time. But in the meantime, it's good to hear my friends are still having fun with it, and finding creative ways to do so.

Image Credit: Skylark Lefavre/Snowy AngelBun Lefavre

Bixyl Shuftan
 

News And Commentary: Questions Raised About Horizon Following Zuckerburg's Comments, Announcement of Creator Fees

 
By Bixyl Shuftan

Facebook/Meta's virtual world of "Horizon" has gotten it's share of criticism (and jokes) over time. But two recent developments have added to it. There was an inworld meeting not long ago in which Mark Zuckerberg met with several online creators. That the owner of Facebook goes online to meet the people there is certainly a positive development. But among the things he had to say was something at one point when they were discussing the ability of people to build things within Horizon using existing tools there, rather than building them outside the game and importing them. Just after the six minute mark in the video of the meeting, Zuckerburg makes this comment:

"...one of the things that we've just tried to do differently is the whole co-developing experience, the fact that everything that you're building is in Horizon itself. I think that is really just different from all of the other experiences out there."

Anyone even remotely familiar with Second Life knows this is not true at all. Since the begining, it's residents have had the ability to build items. Among the first things yours truly did was make a new shirt and jacket. So surely Zuckerburg would know this? Probably, though it's not outside the realm of possibility that he's been so disinterested in Second Life, he hasn't bothered to learn much more about it than it exists (If he's spoken anything about our virtual world, I haven't heard it).

Another possibility is that he is aware that Second Life, and other virtual worlds, do allow inworld building. So why would he just up and tell a mistruth? Maybe he sees that as part of a "spin" to promote his virtual world, pretending that there's no one else that can match him. Or maybe he doesn't want to acknowledge Second Life's existence and feels he doesn't have to.

So either he's unaware of basic details of other virtual worlds, perhaps unaware of them entirely, or he's not telling the truth. Neither one looks good.

Facebook/Meta was criticized over another detail of Horizons: how much of a cut do the owners of the virtual world take from content creators? An article in Business Insider stated that they would charge content creators 47.5% in fees, almost half. "We think it's a pretty competitive rate in the market," Facebook/Meta's Vice President would say of it. But in the past, Zuckerberg had been critical of Apple charging 30% for developers to sell in it's App Store. Naturally, Apple was quick to point this out. A spokesman would say the "announcement lays bare Meta’s hypocrisy. It goes to show that while they seek to use Apple’s platform for free, they happily take from the creators and small businesses that use their own."

PC Gamer suggested a better comparison was Second Life in which fees to "move money into or out ... range from 3.5% to 7.5%" Executive Chairman Brad Oberwager would say, "I can't imagine that Meta's nearly 50% take will be that motivating to creators," pointing out that the Lab had paid 86 million USD to content creators last year. Philip Rosedale, the founder of Linden Lab, would tell PC Gamer, Facebook/Meta's fee "seems like a great way to dissuade creators from actually participating in its economy, but, frankly I would expect nothing less from them. They need to find some way to fill the coffers as their surveillance model loses steam."

Meta/Facebook seems rather untruthful and greedy, which will not help it's reputation, or that of it's virtual world Horizons, and will discourage people, regular users and content creators alike, from using it.

Hat tip: Hamlet Au, Mattie Carlton

Sources: Vidyuu Nights, PC Gamer, Marketwatch, Buisiness Insider

Bixyl Shuftan
 

Call of War

 
By Bixyl Shuftan

One of the games I see advertised numerous times online is "Call of War," also known as "Call of War: World War II" or "Call of War: 1942."  The game is a free-to-play browser-based World War Two style strategy game developed by Bytro Labs. The company also made "Supremacy 1914" and "Conflict of Nations: World War III," which play much the same.

After playing it a number of times, my conclusion is it's enjoyable, but be prepared to spend plenty of gold currency if you want to achieve victory in this Pay to Win game.

To play the game, make a new account, and after reading the rules go to "new games" and select a scenario. There are several from "Europe - Clash of Nations" in which 22 people can play to "World at War" in which a whopping 100 players can take part. games will list how many openings remain, so obviously the more who are already taking part the fewer nations that are left to play. In "American Homefront," some of the nations are really states or provinces in this "alternate history scenario." Once in, you pick one of the available nations. All start with a roughly equal number of cities and resources and a small number of units.

 All cities and provinces have build menus, though cities have larger ones. In cities, you can construct buildings, such as barracks, ports, air bases, factories, etc. Barracks allow you to produce infantry units. Ports allow you to make ships. Aircraft factories will allow you to make planes. Tank factories allow you to make tanks. Ordinance factories allow you to manufacture artillery and similar guns. Secret factories will allow you to make rockets, and eventually atomic weapons. In provinces, you can build infrastructure aka roads, that allow units to move faster, air bases that aircraft can fly missions from or stop to refuel on trips, local industry to increase local resources, and a few more.

But in order to make units, you need two things. You'll need to have researched the particular kind of unit, and you'll need the required resources. Provinces produce a small amount of manpower and money, which are needed for all units and all buildings need money. Cities produce much more of them, in addition to producing one of several resources: food, goods, metal, oil, and rare materials. Most units need some of most of these, though some more than others such as infantry needing more food, tanks ships and planes needing metal and oil, artillery needing goods. If you're short on one or more goods or have more of one or more than you need, you can buy and sell goods on the stock market. And once a unit is produced, that isn't the end. Each needs a small amount of manpower and resources to be maintained.

Research will make new units available. At first, you'll only be able to research a few units and the earliest tiers of, such as level one infantry and level one destroyers. But most of these only need a few resources and not much time. As time goes on, more are unlocked. But further ones available cost more units and take more time. You can research two kinds of units at once, and they are in several categories, such as infantry, tanks, naval, etc. Nuclear weapons are not available until late in the game. The highest tier units need blueprints that cannot be researched but found on the map via airdrops. When a new tier of unit is researched, you can upgrade old units, but that takes resources and time.

Each province has different terrain that various units can use to their advantage. Infantry are strongest in the city, and get smaller bonuses in hilly and wooded terrain. Tanks are strongest in open fields. If there are fortifications, defenders in the owner's province get a defensive bonus when attacked.

One new feature is Doctrine. Each of the nations subscribes to one of four doctrines, each with it's advantages and disadvantages. Countries with the Axis doctrine have more hitpoints and can deal more damage, but cost more to make. Pan-Asian countries move faster, can see further away, and get greater terrain bonuses, but have fewer hit points. Allied countries can produce units faster and can research and upgrade faster. Comintern countries can produce and maintain units using less resources, but they deal less damage.

In order to attack another country, there needs to be a declaration of war, either you on it, or it on you. Early in the game, it's unlikely a computer-controlled country will attack you. As the game goes on, there is that chance of it happening. Player-controlled countries can attack you at any time. When a territory is conquered, it delivers a fraction of the resources to the new owner as it did the original. It's morale also goes down to the point a successful rebellion is possible. Raising it will mean keeping a couple units there for a while. Capturing one of a country's core cities will mean a big loss of the production of one of it's resources, in addition to one less place they can raise units. The loss of two or three will mean the country's in serious trouble and defeat is near without intervention.

The score in games is determined by Victory Points. In most games, conquering cities will get you those, with capital cities delivering the most. But it's how many you have at the end of the game that determine who wins, so taking the lead in the middle of the game won't help if you lose it.

Diplomacy is a part of the game. You can message other players and make deals. You're free to honor them, or surprise and backstab. However, they're free to do the same. You can also join a collation of states, or form one of your own and try to attract members.

And then there are different maps. There's an European map in which players can take charge of a major country (or a faction of a broken-up major country). Or you could play on a world map, one with a moderate number of players, or one with a whopping 100 players. More recent maps include American Homefront in which the US and Canada are split apart, and Antarctica.

One interesting detail is the newspaper. There you can read about who's at war with who. Players can also write their own articles. Some write "news" stories describing why such a country was attacked. But gamers being gamers, there can be charges of certain players being cheaters, backstabbers, or "wallet warriors."

So how can such a detailed game be free to play? This is where Premium Accounts and gold come in. You have the option of paying to get a premium account, which means a few more options. And then there's buying gold. So why buy gold? With gold, you can get money and resources on the stock exchange, you can hurry up the construction of a building, hurry up the construction of a unit, hurry up the research of a technology, heal a unit completely, or raise the morale of a province to maximum. While you can get some gold by accomplishing achievements, such as destroying so many of a particular kind of enemy unit, the easiest way you can get it is to spend real-world money to buy it. So this puts the game in the category of "Pay to Win."

Another problem can be the real-time progress of the game. While someone is sleeping, working, or doing anything else, others are free to attack his country and units. So someone could easily go to bed in the middle of a campaign, and wake up to find his country attacked where his units aren't and the enemy already having marched over much territory and cities. This causes some players to walk away out of frustration, or not willing to play a losing campaign as they don't have the time to spend to make it a winning one.

Call of War isn't a bad game. It can be an enjoyable challenge to come up with the right combination of units for a successful military campaign, and if you have the time to spare, even better. But if you don't have a lot of time due to being a full-time worker (or working two jobs), playing other games, or other activities, then you're going to have trouble winning games unless you're a member of a league, and they may get unhappy if they think you're not playing very often. So some gamers are better off with playing "Hearts of Iron" or some other strategy game they can play whenever they have the time.

I rate the game a medium at three stars out of five. While I can't recommend this game, I won't call it not recommended either. For more information, check the wiki here.

*  *  *  *  *

When launching an attack on a country, leave a few units to help cover other parts of your lands to keep from leaving your backside completely exposed. You also might want to invest in infrastructure to speed up the movement of units from one part of your lands to another.

Different units have different strengths and weaknesses in different terrains. Infantry is vulnerable to armor in plains. But is stronger against it in woods, and moreso in cities.

Don't completely neglect artillery, especially when mobile artillery is available. A stack of units can defend itself from air attacks with an anti-aircraft unit or two. But there's no defense against an artillery bombardment, especially a bombardment from multiple artillery units, except to retreat out of range or attack. A computer controlled stack of units when under artillery bombardment will sometimes try to attack it, either splitting or sending everything. So be prepared.

Keep in mind the higher tier of a unit, the longer it takes to produce. So you may want to delay research for a while until you upgrade your barracks, tank factories, shipyards, etc.

If you have a coastline, watch out for the possibility of an invasion by sea. Make a navy when you can, and build battleships when you can (and don't forget to give them escorts). Seaplanes and artillery can help defend against bombardment by ships. Land units are vulnerable when being transported by water, and take time to disembark, where they can be attacked by land units or bombarded by artillery or bombers.

If you're a free player, save your gold for emergencies. If someone attacks you where you're wide open, you can use it to build units and buy resources for them, in a hurry.

A single game can last for many weeks. If a game isn't fun anymore, or if all of a sudden your real life demands a lot more time than you can spare from your game, don't be ashamed to walk away (after messaging any allies of yours). You can always start a new game later.

Bixyl Shuftan

Reader Submission: Moving About the Metaverse

 
By DrFran Babcock

INTRODUCTION

Greetings, everyone. Since I left Second Life for Philip Rosedale’s VR-inspired High Fidelity, I have not been around Second Life much. Sadly, High Fidelity, as a 3-D virtual world, died a little over two years ago. If you ask Philip Rosedale, co-creator of both Second Life and the subsequent High Fidelity, why this happened, he attributes much of it to the slow adoption of virtual reality hardware and some other reasons that have to do with how people choose to interact.

I love virtual worlds. I have never left virtual worlds since I left full-time Second Life in 2014, moving to the aforementioned High Fidelity. Since then, I have spent most of my time in Vircadia (the open-source world based on High Fidelity’s architecture), Sansar: The virtual world created by Linden Lab as the successor to Second Life; and even Horizon Worlds—Meta’s foray into virtual worlds.

What I plan to do, in writing a sporadic column for the Newser, is to share some news and tidbits from the rest of the Metaverse. It’s important to understand that my view of the Metaverse is colored much by the work of Tony Parisi and Avi-Bar Zeev. Thus, many worlds and One Metaverse.

Last, I want to thank Bixyl Shuftan and Gemma Cleanslate for nudging me back to writing again. I am in Second Life, but only for brief periods of time.

NEWS FROM SANSAR

It is sad to report that Sansar is on life support. At the time of this writing, all of the employees have been furloughed, and many have gone on to other jobs. They are still open, and are still filled with the most beautiful worlds bar none. The remaining community of about 50 avatars are fiercely loyal, and continue to function as if things are without problems.

I would recommend that you go in there, and look around, because I fear that it might evaporate. Sansar was sold to Wookey Technologies a while ago, and at that point, all communication with the owners ceased. There were no more Product Update meetings, and each time the Umbra License (a tool that helps the graphics to run better)  was not repurchased it took a while for it to be repurchased. I believe, at this writing, that the license has lapsed.

It would be a tragedy if Sansar was lost, because I still believe it’s the best looking virtual world. It has drawbacks, chief among them that you cannot build collaboratively, but how many people know you can have 20 worlds completely free?

NEWS FROM HORIZON WORLDS

I was lucky (?) to score a closed Beta invite to Meta’s Horizon Worlds. I have no love for Facebook, but I was curious to see what they had to offer. I will discuss the positives and the negatives here:

Positive:

Building, while rudimentary, is easy, and you can do some creative and different things.

You can build in collaboration. It’s very cool to make your avatar huge, and look down on your build, manipulating objects as if they were a diorama.

The scripting language, proprietary, is visual. This means that hopeless coders like me can manage to script some life into the worlds I build. This is a big plus, in my opinion.

At present, the developers were accessible and willing to answer questions. Since they have opened Horizon Worlds to all USA and Canada adults, it seems to have change.

Negative:

Well, it’s Facebook/Meta, so they want our data.

The avatars have a lot of variety, but I want legs. Come on, Meta.

Children are running rampant in Horizon Worlds. I attended a scripting question and answer meeting, and children kept disrupting the meeting with profanities and racial slurs. The lone developer was unable to manage the number of trolls, and the session was ruined for me. If Meta wants their world to succeed, they will have to deal with this. I think it’s a problem of children “borrowing” their parents’ Quest 2s.

I will leave it at that, and promise more to come.

NEWS FROM VIRCADIA

This is the world where I spend most of my time. It is most definitely not for everyone, because it is not easy to download, easy to use, nor easy to create.

Vircadia is developed by a small, dedicated, committed, and productive group of content creators and residents. There is one event every night except Tuesday, and the folks in their Discord server are helpful, and not fatigued by answering the same questions over and over.

Currently, we are working on a live-action play based very loosely on A Christmas Carol, but with a dark satirical bent, and a focus on virtual worlds. It will take place on Tuesday, December 28, at 2PM Pacific Time.

IN CLOSING

I also attend other virtual worlds, and I am glad to talk about what I do, but I would love to hear from you. If this is content you want, let me know and I will continue to share what I see as I move about the Metaverse.
 
DrFran Babcock