World of Warcraft

The AB roleplay channel last night was filled with people getting ready for Erollisi’s Day, and while Stargrace and I were talking about how the denizens of Norrath enjoyed their holidays, I couldn’t help thinking back to what was once the World of Warcraft’s newest roleplaying server, Kirin Tor, where I played both a husband-hungry troll priestess and a Horde-sympathizing gnome rogue. When I’d get bored with the grind, I’d sometimes head to the Alliance lands for fun. I’d walk around until someone attacked me, then I’d try and keep myself alive while raining death until finally the little ‘uns brought me down. I had a rule; I never attacked anyone that didn’t attack me first. It was bunches of fun for everyone. There’d be these groups of level 10s running around hunting me. I just wish I could have given loot to the people who finally brought me down :) ...

2007 opened with me splitting my time between EQ1 and EQ2. Through brief flings with LotRO, Dungeon Runners and Mythos, and even briefer flings with a half dozen more I played just once, I ended the year in pretty much the same place – playing EQ2 exclusively. There’s these incredibly massive hype/PR machines and all they want to do is build up expectations for their ground-breaking, world-shaking title, or book, or movie, and then when it finally arrives, you go “meh” and wait for the next big thing. And the hype machine worked overtime this year. Burning Crusade, Vanguard, Warhammer, Lord of the Rings Online, Age of Conan, Pirates of the Burning Sea, Hellgate: London, Tabula Rasa; all have (or had) the hype machine promissing so much that almost anything that came (or will come) can only disappoint. ...

There’s been a lot of topics going around the blogosphere, and I’ve been holding off on them because, well, I don’t really have anything groundbreaking to say about them. But, what the heck. eBook Readers First up is a non-MMO one, but something I’ve covered extensively in this blog – eBook readers. “Ask Slashdot” fielded a question from a reader who asked Which eBook Reader is Best? The comments fell predictably into the camps that felt nothing could come close to the experience of reading an actual book; PDAs, cell phones and laptop computers were more appropriate for the task; Sony’s Reader comes from Sony and nothing more needs to be said (these are people angry less for the SWG NGE than for Sony’s rootkit adventures and their role as a quarter of the allegedly evil* RIAA). I use my Sony Reader every day, and daily rediscover old friends – yesterday brought Fred Saberhagen’s “First Book of Swords” and Julian May’s “The Many-Colored Land” onto my Reader. I didn’t comment on Slashdot, though, because… well, commenting on Slashdot on matters of opinion is pretty pointless. I doubt many would be sympathetic to my “I use a Reader because it looks good and is REALLY EASY TO READ” stance anyway. ...

I don’t care, but I just felt I should say something about it. Genj, comments? Edit: Actually, I guess I do have a observation: Aside from making shag rugs from hundred dollar bills, life at Blizzard must be pretty tough. What the heck do you do for a second act? Their next MMO has to do better than World of Warcraft, or it will be seen as a failure. Ten million subscribers in the first week, or blogs and game sites around the world will have “Blizzard has LOST IT! HA HA!” as their headlines. ...

Shut Up, We’re Talking! #12 is up. I had the pleasure of being part of it, along with Grimwell (SOE EQ2 Community Manager) and Tom-Tom from Gamer’s Mind. Thanks, Darren, for being such an awesome host! Darren really knows how to keep the discussion going and moving to interesting places. I was positive I’d have nothing to say :P

And yet I saw them in a limitless stream - flopping, hopping, croaking, bleating - urging inhumanly through the spectral moonlight in a grotesque, malignant saraband of fantastic nightmare. And some of them had tall tiaras of that nameless whitish-gold metal … and some were strangely robed … and one, who led the way, was clad in a ghoulishly humped black coat and striped trousers, and had a man’s felt hat perched on the shapeless thing that answered for a head. ...

JoBildo reposted a summary of a talk given by Gordon Watson, co-director of Bioware, at GDC Austin. Work blocks Gamasutra, so I couldn’t get this from the source. Watson’s talk was about the lessons learned from the World of Warcraft. There’s no denying WoW is popular, the most popular Western MMORPG ever made. They did do a lot of things right, a lot of things very appealing to the new or casual player. Where I believe they went wrong is their emphasis on solo play. Playing by yourself in an MMO? It’s hard for me to see the point. ...

Gosh, who are those slick looking haffers, decked in Tier 1 mastercrafted gear? Them haffers are my new characters on Nagafen, EQ2’s most popular PvP server. I level locked them at level 10 while I get some AAs, but finishing quests has bumped Tipa (the fury in the foreground) to level 11, with Tsuki (the wizard to the right) not far behind, and both with three AAs already… My guild on Befallen, the non-PvP server where my high level characters live, is dying. Summer kills guilds, but this particular one was helped along by a seven day a week raiding policy. Now we’re down to one or two raids a week, of old content, and guilds which are a troub short looking for a short troub… ...

If you play MMOs, you instantly knew from the title that there is a group of people who want to go to Wailing Caves/Caverns/West Commonlands (depending on your MMO) for the purpose of making their characters more experienced, and they are looking for someone to take the hits and attacks from the monsters therein, plus an additional person of any profession to fill the group. They are meeting at the Crossroads (both EQ2 and WoW have a Crossroads near their WC, go figure) and are otherwise ready to go. ...

In my job search, there is a question I dread hearing from an interviewer. And that would be, “Do you play World of Warcraft?” It’s great so many people play. When I lived in Escondido, this guy came over to borrow a Windows XP install disk (does this really happen? apparently…). He’d seen me carry computer gear into the apartment… a LOT of computer gear… and I guess he had a hunch I might be a person who might have one. Which I was. ...