EverQuest

Scene from a WoW raid There’s probably worthwhile studies to be done on the MMORPG phenomenon. The games of the genre are designed to keep you interested and engaged for thousands of hours. The game itself is a potential setting for the formation of a long-lasting community that could extend far beyond the game realm. MMOs have provoked real life violence. Prisoners are rumored to have to play them to support repressive regimes by bilking money from Westerners. ...

The awe-inspiring Harbinger of Regulos If you took all the bullet-point features of Rift and compared them against all the bullet-point features of World of Warcraft as it was before its first expansion – Rift comes out fairly well. The appearance armor and dye systems which lets my rogue look like I want her to look STILL haven’t made it to WoW. And the rift system itself is a real game-changer, and there still seems to be plenty of room to experiment when building a role from souls. ...

Dragon Age Legends One thing you gotta say about Dragon Age Legends: like the single player games upon which its based, in Dragon Age Legends you Get. To. Kill. DRAGONS. (Warning: link goes to Facebook). Unlike, say, Dungeons and Dragons Online, where I have yet to kill a dragon. The one you see in the tutorial is little more than a tease. It’s fighting a mind flayer, though, and we HAVE started killing those in our static group, but the name of the game isn’t Mazes and Mind Flayers Online now, is it? ...

The SOE sheep live in danger I work a full day in the office, then strap my laptop to my back, pedal home and work a full night as well. It’s called crunch time, this is the third month of it, and work people pay me to do is taking priority over writing which nobody pays me anything to do. If I were working on a game, I could excitedly drop hints about it, but the only way you’ll see what I’m writing is if you need to be bonded. Or you happened to be a bond agent. BUT! If you ARE, well, we’ve got something pretty amazing for you this summer :) ...

Being the only player in the Outpost of the Overlord is like being the only kid at Disneyland. Rides aren’t as fun without someone else there! But at level 10, there’s absolutely nothing that gives my little coercer any experience. Once she leaves the Outpost, though, it’s gone forever. No characters can start there any more, and this beautiful little island will never see a new struggling newbie, nobody will plead for help with the cave or the pirate or the graveyard, and one of the most wonderful starting experiences I’ve ever had will be forgotten. ...

I do log in to EverQuest 2 now and again. Mostly for two things – to keep Scatter’s spell research going and to redeem the AA scrolls I win by playing Fortune League on Facebook. Every three and a half days, Scatter gets a new spell level. Every week, she gets another couple AA. It’s like EVE Online. Actually, though, Fortune League has a hard limit of 21 prizes you can win before your prizes no longer show on your Fortune League prize wall. I’d figured out a way to show the additional prizes, redeemed them, and hurried into EQ2 to claim and apply them. ...

Three Wolf Moon cloak Lore text: This cloak will make you more desirable! Also has the property of featherfall. And why it’s particularly funny… The whole “Three Wolf Moon” phenomenon started with this comment on Amazon.com, and from there took on a life of its own (and spawned hundreds of imitators): This item has wolves on it which makes it intrinsically sweet and worth 5 stars by itself, but once I tried it on, that’s when the magic happened. After checking to ensure that the shirt would properly cover my girth, I walked from my trailer to Wal-mart with the shirt on and was immediately approached by women. The women knew from the wolves on my shirt that I, like a wolf, am a mysterious loner who knows how to ‘howl at the moon’ from time to time (if you catch my drift!). The women that approached me wanted to know if I would be their boyfriend and/or give them money for something they called mehth. I told them no, because they didn’t have enough teeth, and frankly a man with a wolf-shirt shouldn’t settle for the first thing that comes to him. ...

Oh, wicked, bad, naughty Zoot! She has been setting alight our beacon, which, I just remembered, is grail-shaped. It’s not the first time we’ve had this problem. – Monty Python and the Holy Grail Is Fortune League a social game? The “fantasy raid party” game is on Facebook, after all, but just putting a game on Facebook doesn’t make it social – not by itself. It seems to me that social games require other people to play. When this came up on Twitter a few days back, I thought that the whole reason why they were called social is that, by definition, they couldn’t be played alone. ...

Plushies, Appearance Items and Housing Since the times when the local post office is open correspond almost exactly to the times I am at work, I won’t be able to pick up my Rift Collector’s Edition until later today… and I couldn’t play last night at all. My headstart amnesty was up. So I turned to EQ2 for a little fun. .bbpBox43845498133692420 {background:url(http://a3.twimg.com/a/1298664727/images/themes/theme1/bg.png) #e4ecec;padding:20px;} p.bbpTweet{background:#fff;padding:10px 12px 10px 12px;margin:0;min-height:48px;color:#000;font-size:18px !important;line-height:22px;-moz-border-radius:5px;-webkit-border-radius:5px} p.bbpTweet span.metadata{display:block;width:100%;clear:both;margin-top:8px;padding-top:12px;height:40px;border-top:1px solid #fff;border-top:1px solid #e6e6e6} p.bbpTweet span.metadata span.author{line-height:19px} p.bbpTweet span.metadata span.author img{float:left;margin:0 7px 0 0px;width:38px;height:38px} p.bbpTweet a:hover{text-decoration:underline}p.bbpTweet span.timestamp{font-size:12px;display:block} @tipadaknife eq2 really? Figured you were done with it.less than a minute ago via Twitter for BlackBerry®redheadedtim ...

A portrait of a nerd CCP has been sending me “come back to EVE” e-mails for awhile now, touting variously their refund of learning skills, the new character creator, soon the “captain’s quarters” where capsuleers can get out of the pod and stretch their legs. So, what the heck, I took them up on their latest offer. I made a character portrait that looks vaguely like me, except my skin is worse and I look way older. ...