MMO Gaming

After reading it I knew it was going to be the highlight for this week. Tobold’s post on a new vision is the best post I’ve read all week (no offense to anyone else.) I don’t really need to even say that much, it nails everything dead on. I may comment on it later, as I often do, but for now just take the time to read it, if you haven’t, and you’ll see it is worth the time.

Now, where were we on the Brad McQuaid bashing?

tobold, highlight of the week, new vision, mmog, mmorpg, mmo gaming, online games

I can’t believe it’s already Thursday…where did the week go?

Anyway I guess I should throw a Highlight at everyone. Normally I wouldn’t highlight a post that was just asking a question but that’s what I’m going to do this week. Over on CuppyTalk there is a post on what environments should be done that haven’t been, or at least haven’t been done well.

It’s not so much the post itself that I’m highlighting, but the comments to it. There’s some funny and interesting stuff posted so check it out and leave a response.

CuppyTalk, cuppycake, mmo world, mmo gaming, mmog, environments

I’m not going to spoil what Common Sense tells you by reciting my own version of it, but he’s got the Highlight of the Week for this week. And what are we talking about? Leaving an MMO. I don’t necessarily agree with all the points brought out, but like I said, I won’t spoil the Highlight by tossing in all that. Take a minute and read it.

leaving an mmo, common sense gamer, mmorpg, mmog, mmo games, mmo gamer

A quickie this week.

I got a comment yesterday on my post about Tabula Rasa from a certain person who calls himself “Fangbear”. What’s not to love about that name right? So, because of that I decided to mosey (score one for using that word) on over and check out this site (so obviously named fangbear.com.)

Well, that’s this week’s highlight, Fangbear.com. Yes, the entire site. Congratulations, you’ve made it on to my list of blogs to read each day. Keep up the good work Mr. Bear.

fangbear, blogs, new blogs, highlight of the week, mmo games, mmorpg, mmog

This week it is a post from Kill Ten Rats by Oz about priests in WoW. I’ll get into why this is true another time, but it is. Priests need buffs to their holy line. Not as much as warriors need buffs to…well…everything, but buffs are needed nonetheless.

And, one of the most important things I think mentioned in the post is the idea of not nerfing classes. Why is this always overlooked? You don’t need to nerf everything to hell to bring balance to the game, there are, in fact, other ways of doing it…but if I continue down this road I’ll start off on a long rant that will be hard to get out of, so let’s leave it at that.

priest, world of warcraft, blizzard, kill ten rats, buff

Is it that time of the week already? Yes, yes it is.

This week’s highlight comes from recent commenter Cuppycake, and her blog (seriously where did all these females come from, everyone knows the interweb is for guys) Cuppytalk. Specifically, this post.

In this post we see a prime example of the reason the genre is classified as an extreme geek thing…even amongst other gamers. Folks who give stuff away to females (or those they think are females) make me sad. If you want to get rid of crap, just send it to me, not some random person you hope is a female. I guess what I’m really saying to all of you is…”Can I have your stuff?”

female gamer, cuppycake, cuppytalk, highlight of the week

We’ll talk about this later.

This weeks’ Highlight of the Week comes from the always great Kill Ten Rats. A post about MMO—s. More specifically about, well, it’s hard to pick out exactly as it seems to switch a bit. It starts out as trying to define the various types of online game and switches gears to the problems with definitions in general…or something like that.

It’s hard to pick exactly what to go on about this post, but it is a great read, and I’ll be writing a follow-up on this post later in the day, but for now, take a bit to read it over so you’ll know where I’m coming from later today.

Kill Ten Rats, MMORPG, MMOG, online games, highlight of the week

As you probably guessed this week’s highlight is a video from over at Machinima.com. More specifically, a World of Warcraft video. To be precise, this video. Huntology the Movie is probably one of the best put together WoW machinima videos I’ve ever watched. At some points the script seems to drop off, but on the whole it is a well developed plot and the effects and styles used to actually make the movie are top-notch.

At close to 20 minutes, it is one of the longer videos to watch straight through, but worth the time just to admire the attention to detail and the real artistry that went into the work. Aside from a minor issue with a microphone the voice acting is also among the best I heard from all the movies I watched.

Stop by the site and watch it, well worth the time.

highlight of the week, world of warcraft, machinima, Huntology the movie, wow, blizzard, world of warcraft movies, videos

This week our highlight is a new feature available on the World of Warcraft official site. The Armory. The Armory is an addition that does what a lot of other sites have done before it, via extra mods, except this is official and is taken directly off the servers, clearing up a nice amount of space on your Addons folder. It includes things like character profiles, guilds, and arena information and rankings.

This is a great feature, undoubtedly, but it is also a feature which almost demanded to be implemented long before this. As great a game as WoW is it always seems that Blizzard is slower in implementing features onto their website than they should be (talent calculators were added much later the unofficial ones, for instance.) I can’t imagine I’m right but the nonchalant attitude they seem to show toward developing their website is a bit silly, especially in light of the fact that the MMO genre is such a step above all other game types (of course, I suppose that works against them in some ways as well.) Anyway, it takes a while to load, a lot of that probably due to the fact everyone is checking it out, but even after it dies down a bit I have a feeling it will be a very intensive addition to the site and won’t speed up dramatically.

Have fun messing around with the site, I know I am.

Via WoW Insider

Wow insider, world of warcraft, the armory, blizzard, wow website, world of warcraft website, character profiles, rankings, guild, arena rankings

I gave some indication yesterday that I knew what was going to be posted today, and it did take some deciding, but here’s what I decided to highlight. It’s an interview from GameDaily with Robert Garriott, the CEO of NCSoft North America (and the brother of Richard Garriott, the interviewee from yesterday.)

I won’t spoil things by diving into it at the moment, but I’m going to talk a bit more about the interview and break it down into some interesting points I found later in the afternoon. Until then, take the time to read it, I found it interesting. Of special interest is his response to the third question on the second page of the interview. As I said, I’ll bring out more later, but I thought that was worth mentioning upfront.

Robert Garriott, ncsoft, richard garriott, interviews, gamedaily, highlight of the week, mmo market, mmorpg, mmog

This week we switch gears from my WoW-centric mode to City of Heroes/Villains and the interview with Matt Miller about the upcoming Issue 9 patch. A lot of cool things are going to be added now, but the biggest is the invention system, and I must say it sounds like it will be a lot of fun. I don’t want to keep on talking about it though, let’s just put up the link so you can read it on your own.

I’ve always found the “City of” team to be generally more responsive, or perhaps just less able to completely avoid saying anything at all then some other companies (we all know who I’m talking about.) Anyway, take a moment to browse the interview and I’d love to hear what some CoH/V players have to say about the new content being added.

city of heroes, matt miller, position, city of villains, cryptic studios, ncsoft, interview

It’s that time of the week again, the day when I dig something up from the bowels of hell and tell you all to go look at it. It seems a rather strange tradition I suppose, but it is also an easy tradition to follow, so it will continue.

This week is something that is great for any player of World of Warcraft (or at least those who like to check out the forums from time to time). Did you ever wish you didn’t have to sift through pages of posts to find ones that had been responded to by Blizzard CMs? Now you can find them easier with the SinisterStrike Blue RSS Feed. It’s a great tool, one I will certainly be using often to find things of interest to write about (the blue posters always seem to come up with something to say that can be taken completely out of context in a topic).

Anyway, enjoy this week’s highlight.

Sinister Strike, RSS feed, blue posts, blizzard entertainment, world of warcraft, forums, WoW forums

This week I’m taking a look at another WoW Insider post about how to leave a guild. I take this as my highlight for a couple of reasons, first because it ties in directly with my Repairing Gears topic for this week (which will be up tomorrow) and second so I can relate some experiences I’ve had in guilds, as player and officer. Why? Because I like telling stories and most of you are far to addicted to the internet to turn away without at least taking a peek at what I have to say.

In the past I told about one of my guild horror stories, this is an extension on my belief about what a guild is. Let me prefix this by saying that I have been before, and currently am, an officer in a guild. Currently I am an officer along with my two closest friends, and we basically only have a “Guild Master” in the sense that one of us has that rank, in reality we share responsibility for the guild. On the other side though I have been an officer in a guild before where I was an officer by title only and held no real effect on what would happen as far as policies go. In both instances though being an officer led to a greater feeling of responsibility for the success or failure of the guild as a whole.

The topic from WoW Insider is about how to leave a guild, and if there is a right or wrong way. Let me say this: As an officer, any time someone left a guild it was a personal blow, and often a big loss of morale for the guild as a whole. As a member there is no right way to leave a guild and the excuses given are almost always poor.

When I say “poor excuses” I’m talking about the “don’t give me that load of crap” that I always want to say to people when they write in guild chat that they are leaving. The most common excuse I’ve seen is “my friends have started a guild/are in X guild and I’m going to go with them”. That excuse is stupid. In fact, as an officer, it is an insult to my intelligence that you would dare say that. Maybe I am unnaturally loyal to the idea of a guild, or maybe the fact that I hold any loyalty at all is unnatural, I’m not sure.

A lot of you probably are reading this and saying “that sounds like a legitimate way to leave a guild to me” if that’s you allow me to explain myself further.

When a person says “I am going to X guild with my friends” or “My friends started X guild and I am going to go there” this is essentially spitting upon every person in the guild. It’s saying, “remember all that time we spent playing together? Well it means nothing to me, you people were no more than a means to an end, a way to get myself loot”. It’s possible that is taking it out of context, but I’m not convinced that it is. To take each side individually the “my friends are in X guild I’m going there” side of the argument is frustrating because, most likely, your friends have been in that guild for a while, and if they haven’t why didn’t they ever try to get into the guild you were in? Is it because this guild was good enough for you “for the moment” but you really only wanted to use it as a stepping stone so you could move onto a “better” guild? That’s the impression I get every time it happens.

Now the “my friends are starting X guild and I’m going to go help them with it” side. Really? Your friends are starting a guild and you are leaving to help them? Once again, why didn’t your friends join our guild, we probably would have accepted them (especially given that they are already in with other guild-mates). This to me says that the leadership of this guild isn’t good enough and my friends and I think we are better than you, so we are leaving, thanks for getting me all my great loot, for helping me run all those instances, for leveling with me all that time.

To put it simply, there is no right way to leave a guild, but if you are going to do it, especially where I am an officer, here’s a little advice: Do it quickly. Say what you need to say to the guild and then /gquit. Don’t offer your help, or give insincere thanks for all the time because it means nothing. If you really had any gratitude at all you wouldn’t be leaving. And after you are gone, don’t whisper me randomly to help you out in A, B or C instance because I will say no. You showed no loyalty to me, and I will return that by showing absolutely no loyalty to you. Enjoy your new guild, and use them until it is convenient to leave, as soon as you feel you’ve milked them for all they are worth.

guilds, gquit, leaving a guild, WoW insider, Highlight of the Week, guild officer, guild leader

This week’s highlight goes to the parody site Get a First Life. Not that I am really big on Second Life in itself, but a well done, amusing parody is always worth mentioning, and this one is pretty high quality. I don’t imagine anyone would be to up-in-arms about this but I could be wrong. Either way, I got a laugh out of checking it over, and hopefully you guys do as well.

I have to say, I was rather amused by the first life questions section especially. That and the “Work, Reproduce, Perish” on the left side pretty much had me hooked.

Via Second Life Insider

Second life, parody, humor, satire, real life

This week’s highlight is to a blog dedicated to the MMO World of Warcraft, WoW Insider. I tend to write quite a bit about WoW on here, mostly because I play it often and it is pretty much the current standard. These guys (and girls) take it a step beyond what I do and actually dedicate the entire blog to World of Warcraft.

There are a variety of different things posted over there, lots of pictures/questions and the like, but in particular, and in lieu of the release this week, I wanted to highlight there Burning Crusade launch day/night posts. Since I won’t be able to get up my story (mainly the photos I took actually) until the end of the week (forgot to take them off the digital camera…) I think there posts are appropriate.

Without any further ado, the posts:

From their Readers

The non-midnighter

From Gainesville

From Raleigh

Chicago Edition

And the early birds from Ithaca (not too far from me as it happens)

Highlight of the Week, WoW Insider, World of Warcraft, WoW Blogs, MMO blogs, burning crusade, launch day