[Left: Huang Fan-shan, Cathay Life; Right: Tsai Pei-chen, Taiyuan]

Cathay Life routed Taiyuan 83-65 and Chunghwa Telecom beat Taipower 60-54 Wednesday as Cathay Life leads the first round of the six-round WSBL regular season 3-0 and Chunghwa Telecom followed with 2-1.

Cathay was led by Lan Hao-yu’s 19 points. Chiang Feng-chun, who re-signed with Cathay Life after leaving the team for one year, had 14 points. Huang Fan-shan had 10 points, 9 rebounds and 7 assists. Chan Chi-fang led Taiyuan with 19 points. Ma Yi-hung did not play due to injury.

Hsu Chien-hui paced Chunghwa Telecom with 21 and 10. Lin Chi-wen had 15 points for Taipower, which remained winless.

The 2012 WSBL regular season runs from Feb 11 to April 29.

[Lin Chi-wen of Taipower]

Standings:
Cathay Life 3-0
Chunghwa Telecom 2-1
Taipower 1-2
Taiyuan Textile 0-3

Filed under: wsbl
Taiwan Hoops

A Congressman stops by to post in your official forums

Broken Toys

I claim EQ in the name of the GNOLLS

Everquest 1 going free-to-play.

With the announcement, the frozen-in-amber separate EQMac server is also going away, which disappointed the people who preferred EQ frozen in amber.

Broken Toys

Beirut to host Champions Cup; Tokyo to host re-christened FIBA Asia Cup

KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia: The FIBA Asia calendar of events for 2012 has been announced.

The calendar will tip off with the 23rd FIBA Asia Champions Cup, FIBA Asia’s premier event for club teams, to be hosted by Lebanon at Beirut from Jun 2 – 10, 2012.

The calendar then moves to Mongolian capital UIaanbaatar for the 22nd FIBA Asia U18 Championship, the qualifying event for the 2013 FIBA World U19 Championship, from Aug 17 – 26.

Mongolia thus makes its debut as a host city of a FIBA Asia event.

Tokyo in Japan is the next stop for the calendar as 10 top National Teams assemble for the 4th FIBA Asia Cup, earlier known as the FIBA Asia Stankovic Cup, from Sept 14 – 22.

The champions from the 4th FIBA Asia Cup will earn a direct qualification to the 27th FIBA Asia Championship in 2013.

Batu Pahat in Malaysia will play host to the finale of this year’s FIBA Asia calendar – the 21st FIBA Asia U18 Championship for Women, the qualifying event for the 2013 FIBA World U19 Championship for Women.

The complete FIBA Asia 2012 calendar

Date, Event, Venue
2-10 Jun, 23rd FIBA Asia Champions Cup, Beirut, Lebanon
17-26 Aug, 22nd FIBA Asia U18 Championship, Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia
14-22 Sep, 4th FIBA Asia Cup, Tokyo, Japan
29 Sep – 6 Oct, 21st FIBA Asia U18 Championship for Women, Batu Pahat, Malaysia

Filed under: fiba asia, stankovic cup
Taiwan Hoops

Industry analysts expressed surprise at this news

It’s official: per CFO Eric Brown, during an earnings conference call, SWTOR is making a lot of money, with 1.7m subscribers (which Brown went to an unusual effort to quantify correctly as a mix of paying customers and customers with billing information entered but still on free trial) and over 2m sell-through (copies sold to actual customers as opposed to sitting on store shelves).

Brown said EA was actually able to add a lot more users on a per-server basis, thanks to some technical improvements. He also noted that about 40% of the units of the game sold during the quarter went over the company’s Origin digital-distribution channel, which is not tracked by market researchers such as NPD.

“This has been the most rapid scaling of an MMO ever, based on our research,” Brown commented.

EA stock rose sharply as a result, pleasing Hutts everywhere. SWTOR is now firmly in place as the #2 MMO, in both earnings and subscribers. It’s now up to Bioware to follow through on that with retention.

Broken Toys

Pure Youth will have to find a replacement for Terence Dials, who had to leave Taiwan after tearing his anterior cruciate ligament, and it has locked up 6-9 forward Quincy Davis, local media reported Thursday.

Davis, who played in China in 2010 and Turkey this year, averaged 10.4 points, 5.3 rebounds during his four years at Tulane University.

PY head coach Hsu Chin-tse was quoted as saying that he was not sure whether 27-year-old Davis would be able to arrive in Taiwan on time because of the Christmas break.

Quincy Davis
DOB: Feb.16, 1983
Height: 205cm
Weight: 111kg
College: Tulane

2002-2003: Tulane (NCAA): 20 games: 2.4ppg, 2.5rpg, FGP: 55.6%, FT: 63.6%
2003-2004: Tulane (NCAA, starting five): 28 games: 10.6ppg, 6.1rpg, BlocksCUSA-4(2.4bpg), FGPCUSA-6(53.3%), FT: 63.8%
2004-2005: Tulane (NCAA, starting five): 28 games: 13.7ppg, 6.1rpg, 1.5bpg, FGPNCAA-10(61.2%), 3PT: 50.0%, FT: 68.6%
2005-2006: Tulane (NCAA, starting five): 29 games: 13.1ppg, 5.8rpg, 1.0apg, BlocksCUSA-2(1.6bpg), FGPCUSA-1(58.1%), 3PT: 2-3, FT: 66.9%: Finished his career at Tulane ranked 22nd all-time in points scored (1,109), 16th in rebounds (559) and 8th in offensive rebounds (226).
2006: Portsmouth Invitational Tournament (Pre-NBA Draft): 3 games: 12.3ppg, 5.0rpg, 0.0apg, 1.0spg, 1.0bpg, 2FGP: 61.5%, FT: 50.0%
2006-2007: InterCollege Etha Engomis (Cyprus-Division A, starting five), in April ’07 moved to Belenenses Hyundai Lusifo (Portugal-UZO Liga, starting five): DNP
2008: In February signed at Deportivo Tachira (Venezuela-LPB, starting five), Venezuelan League: 8 games: 5.5ppg, 3.4rpg, 2FGP: 50.0%, FT: 58.8%; released in April ’08: Liga Sudamericana: 5 games: 13.8ppg, 8.2rpg, Blocks-3(1.2bpg), 2FGP: 54.9%, FT: 65%
2009 July: KBL Pre-Draft Camp in Las Vegas, NV
2010: Jiangsu (China-NBL, starting five): 25 games: Score-4(22.5ppg), Reb-5(13.0rpg), 1.8apg, Steals-2(2.5spg), Blocks-2(3.0bpg), FGP-1(66.7%), FT: 63.8%
2010-2011: In Jan.’11 signed at Bornova Bld (Turkey-TBL, starting five)
2011: Venice Beach Ninja’s (WCBL, starting five)

Filed under: SBL
Taiwan Hoops

Nothing more than rumor at this point.

Twitter: https://twitter.com/#!/TheKevinDent/status/158454172239409152
Kotaku detailing above leak: http://kotaku.com/5876253/thq-wipes-out-games-planned-for-2014-to-ready-itself-for-sale-says-insider

The Vigil-developed THQ-published MMO has had a very long and by all accounts troubled development history but was closing in on eventual release. However it’s rapidly becoming clear that the space for sub-0M budget releases by large publishers is becoming very tiny indeed.

Update: THQ denies the rumor.

Broken Toys

[Antoine Broxsie]

Taiwan Mobile has decided to release former NBA draft pick Marcus Fizer for his bad attitude, local media reported.

Fizer, who played for TM in only one game, told the team his injury flared up and did not practice with the team since then. He asked not to play this week.

According to TM head coach Jia Fan, Fizer also demanded extra preferential treatment.

Jia was quoted as saying that the team decided not to tolerate such behavior and release Fizer. “We don’t let a player to decide when he is in the mood to play and when not to,” he said.

At the same time, KKL is testing Manny Richardson along with Antoine Broxsie. Since each team is allowed to register one import, Richardson had to sit this week and Broxsie took the opportunity to prove himself.

Broxsie, who was tested by Taiwan Beer before joining KKL, had 18 points, 18 rebounds and seven blocks in KKL’s 56-55 win over TB on Saturday after scoring 34 points and grabbed 16 rebounds in a 98-93 overtime victory over TM on Friday.

Taiwan Beer is said to be releasing Dennis Carr and could bring back Emmanuel Jones, who played for TB last year.

Filed under: SBL
Taiwan Hoops

The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2011 annual report for this blog.

Here’s an excerpt:

The concert hall at the Syndey Opera House holds 2,700 people. This blog was viewed about 25,000 times in 2011. If it were a concert at Sydney Opera House, it would take about 9 sold-out performances for that many people to see it.

Click here to see the complete report.

Filed under: misc
Taiwan Hoops

10: Catherine

Catherine was a game whose core gameplay was awful (essentially a very twiddly platform game). And you didn’t care because the game itself was so compelling. Japan is a society that takes adult games seriously (and by that I mean games with mature themes, not Jenna Jameson Modern Warfare 4) and thus we get games like Catherine, which start as a rumination on love and regret and veers into very weird places. Pity about the actual gameplay!

9: Fallout: New Vegas

Fallout 3 was very awesome – as someone who lived in the DC area for a few years it was pretty nifty actually recognizing the post-apocalyptic wreckage of many places I was familiar with,  not to mention just being a great game in general. But it was very much apart from the canon established by Fallout and Fallout 2. Fallout: NV, on the other hand, very much was Fallout 3 in all but name. The only two problems with it: wacky instability when it shipped, and the fact that the timeline has moved so far in the future that Fallout 4 is kind of pointless without some sort of license reboot.

8: Hatoful Boyfriend

Hatoful Boyfriend is a romance simulator where you compete for the attention of pigeons. I don’t need to go any further.

7: Bastion

Lum added Bastion as number 8 on this list. Lum didn’t know what else to say other than it was a really good game and that adding a dynamic narrator to a rogue-like was a work of genius. Thank you, Lum.

6: Portal 2

Like any sequel it wasn’t as OMG WHAT as the original and the gameplay itself started to drag near the end but it still had great writing and the best rant ever put into a video game.

5: Dungeons of Dredmor

Best Use Of Necronomiconomics As A Gameplay Mechanic 2011. This is a very silly game that you should be playing. It’s fun! It’s hardcore! You need the lutefisk for the lutefisk god!

4:  Kaiserreich for Darkest Hour

This will take some explanation. Darkest Hour is a fan-made iteration of the ever-Lum-praised Hearts of Iron 2. Part of its feature set is support for fan mods. The most well-concieved mod for Darkest Hour is a game called Kaiserreich. Kaiserreich postulates a 1936 world where – stop me if I lose you – Germany wins World War 1, the Whites win the Russian Civil War, Communist revolutions overthrow the governments of France (who takes refuge in Algeria) and Britain (who takes refuge in Canada), Hermann Goering sets up a petit empire in the former Belgian Congo Mittlelafrika, Austria-Hungary is finally about to fall apart, the United States is about to be riven in dueling revolutions between the Communists of Jack Reed, the Fascists of Huey Long, and the military coup led by Douglas MacArthur, and Russia can go in any of four different wild directions from a Communist takeover to a Czarist revival. And it works.

3: All The Games I Should Have Played But Didn’t Have Time But Heard Were Really Good.

You know, Dark Souls, Arkham City, Saints Row 3. I’ll get to them. Eventually.

2: Skyrim

Skyrim is the latest version of The Bethesda Game – you know, the one they keep making ever since Daggerfall (trivia: my first foray into games writing was a walkthrough/support site for Daggerfall). This one, they got right. Skyrim really is a non-linear fantasy simulator that is utterly epic in every way and there is almost no wasted space. It really should be the #1 entry in this list and they really are pretty interchangeable at this point.

1: Star Wars: The Old Republic

Yes, the developers and inside baseball commenters will be debating throughout 2012 whether EA has literally moved the barrier of entry into MMO development into the level of small countries’ gross national product with the sheer thunderclap scale of investment that SWTOR represented. But let’s not let that detract from what SWTOR accomplished: storytelling in an MMO that works as the center point of the game. Also, lightsabers. SWTOR is fun. SWTOR is incredible amounts of fun, while redefining what an MMO is. Is it really an MMO when a game essentially is a Star Wars game that millions of people are playing at the same time? Who cares… it’s fun. Games are supposed to be fun, and SWTOR gets that – a point too many MMO developers have forgotten.

Broken Toys