Umbral Echoes Blog

I usually post reviews for gadgets and so forth, but this time I’m reviewing an online chat.  It’s an online text-based roleplaying environment for Exalted, called Web of Memories.

First, a bit about Exalted

For those that don’t know about it, Exalted is a high fantasy game. Basically if you take Dungeons and Dragons, combine it with anime and wuxia action, and throw in some Greek and Roman epics, that’s what Exalted is like. In most roleplaying games you start out as someone fairly above average. In Exalted, you start out as a godlike being capable of carving their way through twenty enemy soldiers without breaking a sweat.

This is absolutely awesome for a tabletop game with friends. However, it gets… tricky when you’re dealing with a chat environment where there are dozens of these badasses walking around. Exalted have a tendency to change the world around them, so it makes it hard to keep to a canonical setting when you’ve got so many concentrated in one place.

Now about Web of Memories

Negatives

• It takes a while to get your character approved. True of any online chat really, though. You make your character, sit around in the main room, and hope to get a storyteller’s attention. Actually for this chat you need to be approved by two storytellers, to make sure that two eyes are on it to prevent things from being overlooked. And to be fair, most other chats I’ve seen have a “pre-sanctioning” process where an assistant storyteller has to approve your sheet first, and then a full storyteller will look at it; so two sets of eyes look over it regardless.
• There aren’t a lot of organized plots being run by default. If you want something, you have to ask for it. On the other hand, it seems that if you ask for it, someone will generally run something for you.
• The documentation could be organized a little better. They use a wiki system, and they do have helpful new player guides and so forth.  But sometimes the information you need is spread across several wiki entries, and some of it isn’t there at all. As one example, when you first make a character, you need to enter the chat with (0/2) on the end of your name. Then when one storyteller approves you, you change it to (1/2). This isn’t mentioned anywhere in the documentation that I could find.
• Most people tend to hang around out-of-character in the entryway. This is also something that’s true of every chat I’ve been on. As I’m writing this, there are 25 people out of character, and only 3 people in-character. On the plus side, this means it’s easy to get to know people OOC, which leads to conversations of, “We should meet up IC and do this.”

Positives

• The people are nice, both players and STs. Everyone I’ve met on here is nice and seems to get along pretty well. I’m sure some people don’t get along with others on here, but I never see any of it out in the open. Yay for no drama! And the storytellers are very helpful — one even gives out his Skype information and encourages people to contact him that way if they need something and he’s not online.
• Generous XP policy. Most chats give you 0.5 XP each day that you log on, or something similar. This chat gives everyone a standard 5 XP per week, given out every Friday.
• Kick-ass character database. This is one of the things that really makes this chat shine, in my opinion. The database was made by a guy that works with Oracle, and most things are automated. Want to buy something with XP? Click a button, it gets submitted, your XP gets deducted, and it will automatically be added to your sheet when the training time is over.
• Relatively few house rules. The ones they do have are well-documented and make sense.
• Easy sanctioning process. This may seem at odds with the first item under “negatives,” but once a storyteller does look at you, the process is pretty smooth. It seems like in every other chat I’ve played in, storytellers see their job as incomplete if they haven’t made you change at least something on your sheet. My experience here? The only change I had to make was adding some references that I forgot to note down (forgot to note Anima appearance, and Favored Abilities).
• Player-run plots are encouraged. They even have a semi-formal system for “PSTs” (player storytellers). You run a scene, send the staff a log of what happened, and the staff assigns rewards based on it. I can’t emphasize enough how awesome this is. Only caveat here is that I’ve heard player-run stories don’t allow 4-dot rewards and above. So if you want that 5-dot Crown of Thunders, you’re going to have to get an official storyteller to run the plot for you.

So if you’re into Exalted, or thinking about getting into it, you should definitely give Web of Memories a try! My only character, currently, is Cathak Caldoras.

When I first heard about this game, I was somewhat excited, but the more development blogs I read, the more it seemed that it would be a money that Bioware pumped big bucks into in order to make a WoW clone with lightsabers, with some window dressing added on.

It turns out, that window dressing makes all the difference. I’ll get into that in a minute, but first I will go into the things that don’t impress me about the game.

Also, I will give the caveat that I am somewhat fresh to this game; I have not yet played all classes, and I have much more experience with the Empire (the “bad guys”) than the Republic. And I haven’t done space combat yet either, though I’ve seen it and it’s basically a Star Wars version of Star Fox (for those familiar with the old SNES game) — basically, a rails shooter.

Some downers

• Combat is mostly standard MMO fare. The combat really is like WoW with lightsabers instead of swords, blasters and force lightning instead of magic. You have a tank, a DPS role, a healer class, and some “trick” abilities (traps, bombs, etc.). There are some departures from this here and there.  For example: the Imperial Agent class does have a cool “take cover” ability that requires you to actually find some cover (and then use an ability to roll into that cover and take a position), from which you can use sniping and various other abilities.
• The dialog options are unclear. When talking to NPCs, you are given several options, sort of like a choose-your-own-adventure book.  However, the option presented does not actually reflect the exact words that you say, and sometimes the connotation of what is presented is different than what you end up saying. For example, “Intelligence can assist with that,” becomes, “I’ll let you know any information I find.” But, as you can see in the image here, you can at least tell beforehand which options will gain you light side points and which will gain you dark side points, however.
• Rough in-game help/tutorial system. I think this is an area that all MMOs are lacking in, but making good progress on.

Some awesome things

• The storylines are actually compelling. This is the biggest one for me. It makes the game fun, and not feel like a grind. At the very beginning of the game, you get the Star Wars fading-int-the-distance text, as if this is a movie and your character is persinally the center of it. Even though part of you knows that everyone else is going through the same stories, they are well-written enough that you feel unique in this universe. As a Sith Warrior, I feel like a supreme badass with far greater potential than everyone else. As a former slave-cum-Sith Inquisitor, I feel that I am being looked down on and really have to work hard to prove myself.
• Companion characters are awesome. This is the second biggest point of awesomeness for me. You get several companions over the course of your story. These are NPCs that can come along with you on missions and aid you.
• This allows for easier soloing — if you are a DPS class with a glass jaw, you can take along a tank companion to take the hits for you.
• Companions add a new dimension to the game. They are actively involved — sometimes they pipe in during your conversations with other NPCs, and you gain or lose affection points with them based on your dialog choices with other NPCs. Mostly, companions evoke actual emotions, ranging from pride to annoyance.
• Companions can take care of the minutiae like selling crap items. Just click and tell the companion to go sell your junk items, they disappear for a few minutes, them return with credits.
• You can equip your companions, which makes them feel a lot more like “real” characters and less like pets.
• There are even romance options, wherein you can become romantically involved with one of your companions. I have not explored this as of yet.
• Voice acting. I thought this would be really cheesy at first, but it actually does help the immersion, a lot.
• Waypoints show you exactly where to go.  Even down to which staircases you need to use. I suppose this may be downside for explorers, but damn do I hate running around wasting time trying to figure out where to go. Especially in a world like this, where one would presumably have a GPS type device. Speaking of which… why are places on the map greyed out until you go there? That seems a bit silly of an MMO troupe to carry over.
• Level 10 email. I got an email at level 10 congratulating me, and linking to some further information and tips on what to do from here, including maps on where to go and what options you will have. Here is an example for the Sith Inquisitor class. That was a very nice touch. This is the level that you choose your class specialization (tank, DPS, healer, whatever), so I think this would be helpful for new players.  Of course, it came days after I reached level 10, so… it would have been nice for that to have been more timely.
• The loading screen shows your story so far. Instead of showing random world lore or tip, the loading screen shows you what’s going on right now with your character. Not only does this make the game feel more “yours,” it’s great for me because I love alts, and tend to forget exactly what’s going on with each character, so it serves as a nice snippet for getting me back up to speed. Here’s an example:
  

Things I would like to see

• Low/high-level grouping. Some sort of apprenticeship system or something, wherein while a level 12 dude groups with a level 35 dude, he is brought up to par. So maybe artificially bumping him to level 35, and boosting gear stats accordingly, just not giving any of the extra abilities/talents.
• The ability to name companions. This is one of the breakers for suspension of disbelief for me. When I see 20 dudes running around with a helper that has the exact same name as mine, that feels a little silly. Just alter the dialog so that other NPCs don’t speak the name of your companions, and this could be pretty easily done.
• Single-server environment. This is a pipe dream, but already I have run into the issue of, “Oh, you’re playing TOR too?  What server?  Aww, I’m on a different server, so we can’t play together.” Why do MMOs insist on this? EVE Online has everyone on the same server, and so does Champions Online. Sharded servers are so early 2000′s, guys.
• Cross-server chatting. Since a single server is a pipe dream, it would at least be nice to be able to chat with friends on other servers.
• Choose your own voice. It would be cool if they had some choices for what voice you want. I know this isn’t realistic — it already took a lot of resources to get the voice acting done, and every other choice would require re-recording all of that dialog.

Overall Star Wars: the Old Republic is a great MMO, and I believe it has the potential to be even greater as time goes on. Will it be a WoW-killer? No, nothing will. If/when WoW declines, it will be because of several awesome new games like TOR coming out and chipping away its subscriber base, not one giant game to rule them all.

These are some of my thoughts on the bigger announcements made at the Q&A session at The Grand Masquerade 2011.

Related posts:

• World of Darkness Q&A at The Grand Masquerade 2011.  These are the announcements I’m reacting to.
• My thoughts on permadeath in MMOs.
• Why your gripes with the World of Darkness MMO are stupid

Permadeath

First, the biggest announcement (in my opinion) was that Final Death (aka permadeath) can happen.  This was a point of strong contention last year — some people absolutely wanted it, some absolutely did not.  I had my own reaction.  CCP stated that the input from last year informed their design decision going forward.

I believe that this can be done in a way that satisfies both people who love and hate the idea of permanent death. They also talked a bit about Humanity’s role in this game, which I think ties in here. So here are some ways I think that permadeath should be able to happen:

• If two players duel and choose that the loser dies for good. Chris McDonough raised this as a “question” to the audience, and there was resounding applause.
• If a player physically attacks someone else in Elysium.
• If a player breaks the Masquerade enough, they are flagged such that someone else can kill them (and possibly even diablerize them if they have that mechanic in game) without being thus flagged themselves, or suffering any other negative consequences.
• I’d even take it one step further, and say that if you kill someone this sort of Blood Hunt has been declared on, you get some influence/prestige/whatever.

This could be one of the defining elements of this game (and perhaps even the defining element). MMOs these days are about grind, netspeak, and generally everything but roleplaying.  Even on RP servers in WoW, you see very little roleplay.  It’s an afterthought — why waste my time doing something that doesn’t ultimately benefit me (mechanically)?

But the World of Darkness is not about killing the biggest badass dragon. It’s about creating a story, connecting with other characters and having social interactions, unveiling mysteries, and fighting the Beast within. The stated themes are: Power, Danger, Mystery, and Romance. So even if “power” is taken in the traditional MMO sense (which I’m pretty sure it’s not), that’s only a quarter of the game.

So what if we have a method using in-game mechanics to discourage people from doing things which break the feeling of the setting? Then the game will be self-policing, and that is the philosopher’s stone of MMO game design.

And as a note, ideally I’d like to see a carrot as well as the stick (to use the old metaphor) — some mechanical benefit to roleplaying in a way appropriate to the setting.

Sex and Violence

They said this will be an adult game, with nudity, violence, etc. This is awesome.  It just wouldn’t be the World of Darkness without tits and gore and mind-breaking fucked-up shit happening. Of course, they will have to figure out what to do in countries where certain types of sex and violence in games can simply get your game yanked, but they said they have a legal team researching and working on that.

Someone brought up the point that if you allow players to walk around naked, that breaks the game feeling.  In other words, you make it a more adult game by not allowing players to strip naked at will.  Chris’s response to that implied to me that they are well aware of this, and that full nudity would be allowed in havens (and hopefully other appropriate areas), but not necessarily in public.

Hellooooo cybersex havens!

I say that tongue-in-cheek, but sexuality is a huge part of the Vampire mythos, and I actually do think it would be damn cool to being able to lure a mortal (PC) to your haven with p[would be pretty damn cool.

Player-Run Political Structures

The Prince, Primogen, etc. in the cities will be PCs.  This is pretty frackin’ cool. I would expect it, based on EVE’s player-based focus, but it’s still nice to hear it confirmed. This will also be another defining characteristic of this game, I believe. The mechanics behind how one attains and keeps “office,” what it allows you to do, and other such details are yet to be revealed. What are your thoughts — how would you do a vampire political system?

Everyone Starts as a Mortal

Also very cool, in my opinion.  It was not mentioned whether one must necessarily find a PC sire, or if there is an option to be sired by an NPC.  I can see pros and cons to both. It was also stated that you cannot be embraced against your will, which is a good thing.  They did not mention the possibility of playing as a ghoul — I think that would be pretty neat, but really I don’t want them taking their focus away from creating an awesome vampire experience to create a cool vampire-lite experience.

One Server to Rule Them All

Okay, “sever” is a broad term since a server is really made up of many computers these days. But, this will be a semi-sharded game — everyone is in one game universe, but there will be different cities.  However, one can travel between cities, in a manner analogous to character server transfers in other games.  What is not clear is how easy or difficult that will be (though I imagine fairly easy and hopefully free).  It is also not clear whether your character’s name must be globally unique or not.  (Personally, I’d like it so that character names don’t even have to be unique on a given server like with Champions Online, but I somehow doubt that wish will be granted.)

It was also stated that the cities will all be large, but will not be clones of one another.  I imagine that they will be clones content-wise — I mean, dear Cthulhu it would take shit-tons of resources to make different maps for the different cities.  However, it was explicitly stated that cities will be different due to player controlled/originated things.  Taken in the mindset that this is from the same company that created EVE Online, I take this as a pretty big hint as to what could be planned, and I salivate over the possibilities.

External Access Via Web

No details were given, but if CCP is taking a page from Blizzard’s book with their World of Warcraft Remote, that will be pretty awesome. Even better if they make it capable of more things, and make it an included part of the game (as opposed to an add-on service). People are constantly on the move, and since they said that this will be very much like a Vampire LARP, being able to get notifications of events — and react to them — when you’re on the train to work will be a pretty huge thing.

Those are really the high points from the Q&A session. Let’s see what other news comes out in the following days!

The following notes were taken from the World of Darkness Q&A/suggestion panel at the Grand Masquerade 2011, lead by Reynir Harðarson and Chris McDonough.

Also see this post for my thoughts on some of this.

* Wants social interactions to “have some meaning” (perhaps implied mechanical consequences to social interactions?)
   - Yes, that will be a part of it.

* Microtransactions    - wants transparency, wants more info
   - Blame Chris McDonough; will release more info next year.
   - Chris says, “Pay attention to EVE Incarna.”

* Play as mortal from “scratch” vs playing “sleeper”; toggle sort of like pvp for being embrace-able
   - Everyone starts as mortal, but can never be embraced against your will.
   - Vampires can die permanently under some circumstances. (See item toward the bottom.)

* Gaining titles within own real life city, interact with higher-ups from other cities and travel to other cities
   - That’s exactly how it works.

* Have tiered dev system for brand new vs old players?
   - Game is as deep as you want it to be.
   - External access to game through web. (Editor’s note: no specifics were given, but I highly doubt you’ll be able to actually play the game from the web.)
   - You can gain Influence without ever fighting someone.

* Plan for caitiff? “Deck of many things”
   - Caitiff not part of original release, unlikely at this point.

* Day/night cycle?
   - When server goes down that’s when day breaks (in other words, it’s always night)
   - Looked at options like playing own ghoul, but this game is about playing a vampire, so you should be able to play a vampire at any time.

* Dementation suggestion    - screen goes crazy/dark, friend looks like monster
   - There is some stuff like that in the game.
   - Powers will work the same on humans, NPCs, and PCs.

* Majesty    - combat (you can’t attack me) and out of combat (you have selection of options to say)
   - Something like that but [social] PvP is more about breaking down your opponent’s will.

* Filter control to keep scrotemaster griefers out
   - Attacking other players lowers humanity, when goes low enough you are open for others to attack you.
   - As far as trolling, you can ignore someone.
   - “You will have ways of dealing with it through actual gameplay. You will have to behave in this world. But we also need enemies, assholes, someone to hate. But there is a ratio there.”
   - The game will have havens.

* Role-play is secondary in other mmos
   - Lot of game design around this, like political system. See EVE; wanted role-play to emerge naturally. “When your character’s goals align with your goals as a player, then roleplaying is natural.”

* Concerns: pvp, some people want to roleplay without getting fucked with. Guy jumping around in thong. Masquerade enforcement. Malks need extra tlc because of their uniqueness. Age of Conan adult scale-back, don’t want that to happen here last-minute.
   - Have staff lawyer looking into legal implications of adult stuff in all countries. Some countries will just shut you off if you break policies/laws on adult content.
   - It’s about doing it tastefully, not gratuitously.
   - Gotta be careful about giving players ability to be nude. Might be a more adult game without that. Possibly nudity in own haven but not public.
   - More similar to LARP than EVE.
   - PVP is very different than in other games. Both more free and more restrictive. Want the world to feel real; it’s a dangerous place. Have to make friends. If you go out of line we want the community to be able to punish you.

* Will Sabbat vs Camarilla PvP be player driven?
   - More structured than EVE but not as structured as the Masquerade.
   - Power structures are player run, like Princes and Primogen.

* Alternative paths? Like paths of enlightenment?
   - Right now no, but every intent of releasing that in expansions.

* V20 Europe wants game that is adult, with story, unique character that is not a clone (can tell on sight), and will run on lots of hardware.
* Planning on promoting in Europe, like at GamesCon next year?
   - Story is tangential to the game. There won’t be a story that drives the game
   - Unique characters are extremely important in this game design.
   - Reynir: “Does not run on iPad yet.” Mindful of required specs though, like laptop. Will have multiple visual settings/levels, but want it to look good no matter what setting. “It’s going to run on a laptop.”
   * Clarification: Story meaning background.
   - Editor’s note: There was no official answer — it was sort of lost in the shuffle — but I will go ahead and say yes to this.

* Actions should have consequences, including true death
   - True/permanent death can occur.
   - Chris: “Should players be able to duel each other with an option for permadeath?” Loud applause.

* Planning on incorporating other genres?
   - Stick to vampire initially.

* CoH veteran rewards style of opening up other WoD races?
   - Just focusing on vampires now, don’t want to even talk about other character types at this point.

* Overhead names in UI? Way to keep notes if not?
   - There will be an option to have names overhead, but it we be off by default (presumably to make the game more immersive).

* Standard char sheet?
   - Yes, and it looks very similar to the pen and paper RPG.

* Metaplot not solely driven by PCs
   - Yes metaplot, but hard to do that without disempowering players.
   - Again more similar to LARP.
   - Metaplot through expansions.
* This guy apparently absolutely hates PC-driven metaplot. Perhaps this is not the game for him, and he should instead simply read a book.

* Permanent consequences like blow up a building and it stays that way
   - Big in MMO world now. Phased instancing etc. It’s not about the graphics though. It’s about what happens in the world. See EVE as example.
   - Things open up and close down.
   - Reynir doesn’t like phased instancing. “We don’t want the game to lie to you.”

* Will there be a generation system, and cap? Will there be diablerie?
   - This is under heavy discussion now.

* Dynamically generated content? A la Guild Wars, e.g. garou attacking a part of the city, if you don’t defend it then they now have control over it.
   - Yes. And there will be world events.

* Single server?
   - Multiple cities that you can travel between, but all one world. So, sort of a single shard.

* How to determine how one player has praxis of something? Mechanical locking?
   - Yes there is a mechanism, but requires lots of human interaction.

* Different sized cities? Population controlled?
   - Populations can vary, but all cities will be large.
   - There will be differences between each city. Player controlled/originated differences. (Hint, hint.)

* Does your game have NPCs?
   - Yes.

* Justin Achilli asks: If you’re not lying to players, then why have fake people (i.e. NPCs)?
   - Essence of response: STFU, Justin

* Translation? E.g. Latin American?
   - Yes, via a newly developed “Cerberus” system.

* Will there be a system for torpor, like cool-down period?
   - Not in traditional sense. [Torpor] is an excuse for why your PC doesn’t die.

Yesterday, Steve Jobs resigned as CEO of Apple, volunteering himself to be chairman of the board instead. I predicted that their stock would plummet, but my company’s president (also named Steve!) said he didn’t think the stock would drop much because Apple “graduated everyone into the idea that he’s out.” Turns out, Steve was right — guess there’s a reason he’s in the driver’s seat.

In any case, I think this could be great for Apple. Actually, when Jobs leaves completely, I think Apple could make some great strides forward. How, you ask?

Because they won’t have Jobs’s ego holding them back. As one big example, HTML 5 is not replacing Flash, sorry buddy. Flash does not drain batteries like the filthy whore that Jobs makes it out to be (as proven by Flash running fine on hacked iPhones).  If iOS devices were to support Flash, that would knock out the main advantage that Android devices have*.  And hey, maybe they’ll be more willing to admit to mistakes too.  Remember that whole iPhone 4 antenna issue and Steve Jobs’s response to it?  Yeah.

Edit: It has been pointed out that I only used the example of Flash, which does not a valid argument make.  So as another example, Apple has a somewhat-recent policy of disallowing apps from linking to their own websites where people can buy stuff.  This, I feel, comes from the Jobs-like mentality of, “We’re the best, if you want in on our platform you play by our rules and give us a cut of everything that happens on our device.”  However, this will ultimately weaken them as companies turn instead to web apps, as Amazon recently did with their Cloud Reader. This gets consumers more comfortable with using web apps, and companies soon realize, “Hey, you mean I only have to pay to develop this once, and it will work on any mobile device with a browser — including both Apple products and Android products?  Sweet!”  More companies do that, meaning iOS has fewer exclusive apps, and consumers have a more viable choice in alternatives.

In general, I feel that Jobs has an attitude of, “We are the market leaders, therefore the market goes where we say, not the other way around.  We tell people what they want; they do not tell us what they want.”  Which, to some extent, is true.  But that level of ego also blinds one to their own weaknesses, which is to Apple’s detriment.

* I’m sure Android devices have many other awesome advantages, but from an average non-tech-savvy average Joe perspective, Flash is really the one functional thing missing from iPhones and iPads that Android has.

This is a quote that I find myself constantly looking up, so I’m basically just putting it on my blog so I’ll be able to find it more easily in the future.

The Difference Between DnD and Exalted:
From “spatulalad,” on RPG.net:

D&D: “Okay, you enter the tavern and head to the bar. As you’re sipping some ale, you overhear some rough looking half-orcs talking dirty to the daughter of the guy in charge of the caravan you’re guarding. What do you do?”

Exalted: “Okay, you enter the city and kill off the current ruler and set yourselves up as the overlords. As you’re setting up court, your Night Caste reads the lips of a messenger a mile away and figures out that one of the Dragon-Blooded viziers is plotting with a demon lord of the Second Circle to eat the souls of the first born children of all people in your city and then use the ritual’s power to make a ten story First Age warmachine that shoots laserbeams from its eyes. Also, there are ninjas. What do you do?”

Google+ is the shiny new toy over the past week or so.  It is very Spartan compared to Facebook, which is its strength.  It is also very flexible in how you can use it… which I fear may be its downfall (those who remember Wave will be familiar with this).  Circles are cool things — they’re like Facebook friend lists, but instead of being an afterthought as in Facebook, they are a core part of the design of Google+.

I plan to split my circles into two types: “broadcasting” and “receiving.”

Broadcasting circles will contain groups of people whom I want to broadcast certain types of information to.  For example, many people in my friend list really don’t care about my latest Exalted game, but the gamers might.  So I have a circle called Gamers that I will post that sort of thing to.  Basically, the sorts of people that if I would talk to these sorts of things about if I were in front of them face-to-face.  My friend Sheena has even publicly posted a list of her circles and asked people which they would like to be in, which I think is a great idea (maybe I’m into knitting and she just never knew!).  I’m going to post mine on my public profile.

Receiving circles will be groups that I want to listen to for different topics.  I am thinking this will be a much smaller set of circles.  Probably only two, actually: one that I pay attention to always, one that I pay attention to sometimes, and the third implied group of everyone.

What is the purpose of this?

The “broadcasting circles” are to help combat information overload.  One of my main issues with Facebook is that there is a lot of information overload on there: I have to wade through tons of posts that I simply don’t care about in order to get to the few that I do.  So to help alleviate this for others, I plan to be specific about what I share with whom.

The receiving circles is to help combat information overload from the other end.  I’ve just got started with Google+ and I have nearly 150 people on my list.  If all of them were to use the above philosophy of broadcasting circles then my stream would probably be manageable.  However, I don’t realistically expect that — many will probably post publicly (or to all of their Circles) by default.  Which is no knock against them; I realize not everyone is going to see circles the same way that I do.

What are your thoughts on this?  How do you plan to organize your circles?

Apple pretty much assumes that everyone who is using their iOS beta has a Mac — which is a reasonable assumption, because the beta is really more for developers to make their application work with iOS 5 than for nerds like me who just want to use the features before they’re publicly available.  But I digress.

Since Apple doesn’t really provide any instructions or support for installing iOS 5 using a PC, I will tell you how.

1. Download and install iTunes 10.5 Beta 2 from here (you will need to have a valid Apple developer account, which costs $99/year).  This step is very important! Even if you downloaded 10.5 Beta 1 to install iOS 5 Beta 1, you still need to download Beta 2, or the upgrade won’t work.
2. Download iOS 5 Beta 2 from here (again, you’ll need a valid Apple developer account).
   • Make sure to download the correct version for your device. If you’re on AT&T, download the GSM version; if you’re on Verizon, download the CDMA version.
3. Using 7-Zip, unzip the .dmg file, then unzip the file “2.hfs” that is inside of that.
   • Inside of that, there should be a file named something like “iPhone3,1_5.0_9A5248d_Restore.ipsw”.  Note its location.
4. Plug your iPhone into your computer and start up iTunes if it does not start automatically.
5. Sync your iPhone to make sure that you have all the data on it backed up.
6. Shift+click on Restore, then navigate to that .ipsw file from step 3 and select it.
7. Restore your phone.
8. After restoring using that file, you will need to restore again using the backup from step 5.  This will take some time, but it will add all of your contacts, text messages, songs, apps, etc. back onto your phone.

And then you’re done! The only real glitch I’ve noticed is that during the last step, some applications seem to get lost in the ether, so you may have to reinstall them. You may also have to re-enter email passwords and the like.

Important Note: This is for iOS 5 Beta 1. I will provide an article for iOS 5 Beta 2 soon, though currently I am not sure if the workaround for non-developers listed below works for Beta 2.

There aren’t many good tutorials on this out there, so I’m making one. I actually made the instructions for my girlfriend to start out with, but I figured some other people out there might be interested too.

Caveat 1: I am not responsible for any damage/bricking/etc. that may occur from this — iOS betas are generally pretty stable, but sometimes bad things happen, so don’t blame me if they do.

Caveat 2: The beat is really only supposed to be for Apple developers. It will be buggy, and I have already found several bugs, in fact.

Caveat 3: It is possible that with the next release of the beta, Apple will patch any holes that allow non-developers to have access to this, which could brick your phone (restoring to a previous iOS is very hairy). If that happens, please do contact me and I’ll do my best to help you fix it.

Okay, with that out of the way, here we go! Note that this tutorial will also work for the iPad and the iPhone 3GS, but you will need to download a different IPSW file to do that, as mentioned above under step 3. Also this tutorial is assuming you’re using Windows, but there’s really not much difference (except that Apple doesn’t directly offer iTunes 10.5 even to developers as far as I can tell).

1. Back up your iPhone using iTunes.  Just do a normal sync operation, this should handle it.
   • Just to be extra sure, you might want to copy that backup to a different location. You can find this backup using these instructions.
2. Install iTunes 10.5 beta, from here (if that doesn’t work for some reason, there are other links listed here under “iTunes 10.5 (Windows x64(64-bit, 74.07MB)”).
   • If you have a developer account and want to get it in a more authorized way, you can — the Windows version is well-hidden under the iCloud downloads. iTunes 10.5 Windows Beta.
3. Download the iOS 5 beta torrent here (or again, if you have an Apple developer account, just get it from there but see the third note below if you do that).
   • For AT&T choose the GSM version; for Verizon choose CDMA.
   • If you don’t already have a BitTorrent client, I recommend uTorrent.
   • If you do a Google search and get it from elsewhere (or from Apple’s developer site) as a .dmg file, you might need a special program to unzip that; go ahead and install 7Zip to do that. After you unzip it, go into that folder and unzip the file “2.hfs”.  That should have a directory named “iOS 5 beta – iPhone 4 – 9A5220p” which will contain the file iPhone3,1_5.0_9A5220p_Restore.ipsw — that’s what we’re interested in.
4. Follow instructions here (basically fire up iTunes, hold down Shift while you click the Check for Update button, and select the IPSW file you unzipped above).

Tada!  Your phone will go through a few reboots, you will be prompted to activate it, and at that point you’ll be really scared because none of your apps, contacts, music, etc. will be on there.  Never fear — just run a restore from that backup you made in step 1, and you’re golden.

Happy upgrading!  And please, if any of this doesn’t work for you, or any links are broken, let me know.

Yeah, I jumped on the bandwagon. I upgraded from my iPad to an iPad 2. Who can resist the geek-chic siren’s call of new Apple products?

Seriously though, the iPad took the market by storm, and the iPad 2 is superior (in my opinion) to the alternatives — both those currently on the market, and those hitting soon. That’s not to say that it doesn’t have some glaring flaws as well. So, let’s get to it.

The Good

• Camera — The biggest change in the iPad 2 was the addition of a front-facing and read-facing camera. It works as advertised, though the rear-facing camera doesn’t seem to be as good as the iPhone’s. Honestly, I think they could have done away with that one entirely and made the front-facing camera better quality for better quality videoconferencing.  Though after a bit of playing around with it, I do have to say it’s a bit of a pain to transfer video from the iPhone to the iPad — to do it without annoying sync operations through iTunes you have to buy a 3rd party app, in fact.
  • Skype video over a 3G connection is not so great.  When I tested it, I was around 3-4 bars of signal (out of 5), so perhaps this would be better with 5 bars. I saw the other end okay, but they said I was doing the jitter, freeze-and-catch-up thing.
  • FaceTime is pretty awesome.  There was a bit of blurriness when FaceTiming with my girlfriend on the same WiFi network, but the network had been acting a little funny that night anyway.
• Smart Cover — I thought this would be a neat thing but nothing too special; however, it’s actually surprised me. The magnets are stronger than I had thought they would be, making the cover much more stable in the stand-up configuration than I expected. The triangle-fold allowing stand-up or slight-incline is useful, and much easier to use than the cases Apple pimped for the original.
• Battery life — When a device gets smaller, that usually means the battery gets smaller, as does the battery life. In this case, Apple managed to make it smaller and faster while retaining the amazing battery life. Some tests have even shown it to have superior battery life when compared to the original, but my bet is that they were using a brand-new iPad 2 and a year-old iPad, so there would be some battery degradation on the latter.
• Sexy software — iMovie is pretty awesome, though it does take a bit of getting used to (I wish they had a tutorial or something available within the app). Using iMovie is a much better experience on the iPad 2 than on the iPhone 4. I haven’t tried Garage Band yet (haven’t even bought it), but it seems fairly awesome.  And the operating system in general is intuitive, smooth, and sexy. You don’t have to read any manual to use this thing — you just turn it on and go.

The “Meh”

• Fingerprints — The oleophobic coating does help… a little. Mostly they help in removing the fingerprints more easily, not so much with preventing them. So the thing still gets fingerprint smudged to hell. The magical covers have a glass cleaner on the underside, which… kind of works, but not really. And because of the shape, even the bit that it does work makes causes issues because where the fold creases are in the cover, there is no cleaning, so you end up with vertical smudge stripes where the cleaning bits didn’t touch.
• Speed — This was actually improved a lot, but I list it as “meh” because the original acted very snappy, so the speed increase doesn’t really affect the experience much. Rebooting is notably faster, but you hardly ever need to do that. But if you’re interested in the boot time difference, check out this video I made.
• Thinner — It is notably thinner, and feels better in the hand. However, I put this in the “meh” section because it causes some issues too — mainly, the angled edge. It makes it really awkward to plug in the sync/recharge cord, and ejecting the SIM card was unintuitive (click that link to see). Also, it’s much thinner and only a little lighter, which means it’s actually more dense, which in turn makes it feel heavier.
• No back protection — Yeah, you can get a third-party case for it, but it is sort of a shame that the flagship covers don’t protect the back of the device from scratches. I’ve been babying it, and so far so good, but I’m betting that it’s going to develop tiny little scratches soon.
• Big iPod Touch — Let’s face it, there really isn’t any difference in iOS between a handheld device and the iPad. There is tons of whitespace between icons, for example, and overall you can really feel that the OS wasn’t made for a tablet device.  The same was true of Android until recently with version 3.0 (Honeycomb).

The Bad

• Expandable storage — It still doesn’t have it. There were rumors that it would, and I was hoping that because the tablet market is heating up bigtime that Apple would see that they need to compete in this way to lure photographers. But no, they just made an SD dongle that allows you to transfer photos and videos to/from an SD card, but not actually use it as extra space.
• Adobe Flash — There is no Flash support now, or ever (unless something changes drastically).  There are some alternatives to watch Flash video, like an app that costs $5 and converts from Flash to a playable format, but that doesn’t work with Hulu, and it doesn’t at all work with Flash apps or games.  Steve Jobs would like you to think that Flash is going away in favor of HTML 5.  He’d mostly like you to think that because he wants it to go away, and if he can convince everyone that it is going away then it will become a self-fulfilling prophecy. I’ve got news: Flash isn’t going away.  Get over your shit, and support it.

Conclusion

I really like the iPad 2 a lot. For me, the video conferencing is definitely worth the upgrade. And if I didn’t get on the bandwagon with the first iPad, I definitely would have with this one. If you’re thinking about upgrading, I’d recommend trying to sell the old one on eBay first to see how much you can get for it (look to see what others are selling for and expect to get about that).  Or give it to a friend or your significant other and get the upgrade for yourself. People made fun of Jobs for calling the iPad “magical,” but once you play with one for a few days you’ll realize that it really is.

A final note, on Android tablets: Some of the Android options out there are neat, but none really compare to the iPad 2. They try to sell themselves on hardware specs, and honestly that shit just doesn’t matter. The iPad is relatively cheap, thinner, and more polished than the competition, with more killer apps. I hope that Android tablets will catch up, but right now there’s really no competition.