MMO Gaming

What happened this week? Truthfully I don’t know.

Monday I wondered why Blizzard can’t get a decent forums up for their site after two years. Why are we still using a partially working crap pile even after the update? Blizzard’s need to re-invent the wheel instead of using the many available forum softwares in existence is just silly.

Speaking of Blizzard and stupidity, Tuesday I found some obviously fake patch notes. Why obviously fake? Because they actually spend time buffing and fixing the classes. Silly noobs, lrn2blizzard, just nerf the shit out of everything and see what happens.

On Wednesday there was an interesting topic about sponsored Arena teams in World of Warcraft. Will MMOGs be the next huge contenders for the professional gaming market? Later that day we hit up the Repairing Gears topic, its debut at it’s new daily slot. Sadly, no diagrams.

The Highlight of the Week was something Blizzard managed to do nicely. Well, more like in typical Blizzard fashion. They put out a great raid attunement chart that is easy to understand and nice to use.

Next week…diagrams on the Repairing Gears.

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Had a bit of a laid back week this week, some nice weather early in the week, followed by some utterly horrible weather at the end of the week had me AFK for quite a bit.

Let’s get on with it though.

Monday I proved once more that idiots still abound. The good news is they seem quite happy to stick to the WoW general forums. Blizzard needs to stop nerfing and start buffing all classes. The fact that they don’t understand nerfing all classes to suck equally is not balance is still astounding.

On Tuesday I found the list of the Hot Developers of ‘07, with MMOs getting a healthy showing. For some it remains to be seen whether they will continue their trend of high quality games or not.

The Highlight of the Week, on Wednesday, was pulled from Kill Ten Rats a great blog and a great article on MMOs.

I went into Karazhan, the first raid instance in the World of Warcraft expansion on Thursday. Though it didn’t go great, there were some good things I picked up on. Our second attempt the following night went much better, but that’s for another time.

There was a delay in the Repairing Gears for the week, causing all articles to be pushed back slightly. As for Repairing Gears, it appeared Friday. We looked at some of the basics of the user interface, the unit frames. There will be plenty more next week, with some additions to the unit frames as well as additional diagrams for other interface areas. I also mentioned that starting with the upcoming week there will be a change in the weekly articles. The Repairing Gears topic will be moved to Wednesday, and on Thursday the Highlight of the Week will be posted. This should hopefully stop any future delays (though I’m me, so who knows.)

That covers this week, keep reading next.

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Some would argue this is a day late, which is technically correct, if you, like so many others, believe that the 9th was Friday and today is in fact Saturday. I say that’s crazy talk, but I’ve been told otherwise.

Monday had me complaining about the worst dungeon to ever be seen in a game, Shadow Labyrinth. The fact that I am still, on occasion, forced to run this god-forsaken instance disturbs me greatly.

On Tuesday I gave another update on Dungeon Runners invitations, as I seem to be creating quite the stockpile of them. I am still working my way through them but I seem to get more people trickling in each day, so I’m doing what I can to get them out.

On Wednesday I started out by leading up to my highlight of the week directing people over to Machinima.com to check out some great videos. Later in the day, I added in the Highlight of the Week, a great piece of work called Huntology the Movie, the best example I’d seen of Machinima work.

Grinding, the bane of my existence, was my topic on Thursday Morning. I followed that up with the weekly Repairing Gears piece covering Information Management as it relates to the user interface.

Finally, on Friday I posted some screenshots of one of the most brilliantly idiotic conversations I had ever seen in World of Warcraft, which is quite the accomplishment.

That wraps up this week in review. Next week be ready for diagrams in the Repairing Gears piece. And really, who doesn’t love a good diagram?

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We’ll skip the pleasantries this week and get right in to what happened.

On Monday I made mention of Blizzard’s plans to bring back the LFG channel, at least in a way, even though they had said it wouldn’t happen. This “fix” is really an inherently poor band-aid on the LFG problem, but that’s another story entirely.

Tuesday I was happy to be respecced to the Feral line as my Druid, putting out ridiculous amounts of damage was fun. Having been feral for about a week now though I can say I am kind of looking forward to going back to healing again. Feral is a lot of fun, but I miss Nature’s Swiftness for those “oh crap” moments.

I checked out the February edition of the Warhammer Online Newsletter on Wednesday and talked about what I hope is an interesting way of not pigeon-holing classes into a single role. Later that day I added the Highlight of the Week, focusing on the WoW site’s new feature, The Armory.

Then, on Thursday I posted about people who know how to run a contest without actually spending any money. The Tabula Rasa team should be commended for being so frugal. That night I posted the Repairing Gears post on the WoW Guild System, this time focusing mainly on guild halls. It was, at least as far as I can see, the fourth and final installment of that Repairing Gears topic.

To round out the week, on Friday, I was amazed by the sheer idiocy of a great number of people. Even forgetting the fact that player’s have no rights to their character’s in Blizzard’s game the arguments were stupid.

That wraps up this week in review. Keep reading next week.

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A day late late on the weekly roundup (but I’m still marking it for yesterday, because that’s how I do things.) Given my annoyance with myself for not saving the article I wrote I can hardly blame myself for not posting this yesterday, but it does need to be posted, so here is the rundown of the week.

Monday had me focusing on all the lowbies infesting my new server in World of Warcraft. I’m fairly annoyed by this, it really is a pain to be surrounded by people who want to be friendly; it’s just unnatural.

Tuesday I couldn’t decide which interview I ran across should get the Highlight of the Week spot, so I put the one that didn’t make it in this post.

Wednesday I moved on to the Highlight of the Week. Later that day I went back to bring out some things I found especially interesting in the interview.

On Thursday it was yet another interview with Richard Garriott, who just can’t seem to shut up about things.

Finally on Friday, I was cursing myself for not saving the Repairing Gears post, which skipped a week because of my inability to drag myself back to rewriting it immediately.

That finishes off this week, next week there may be some doubling up on certain articles.

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This week was a bit laid back compared to some others, but there was plenty still going on. Let’s get right to it.

On Monday I gave an update on Dungeon Runners invites, expecting the number of people wanting to get in on the action to decline.

Tuesday I contemplated whether Lord of the Rings Online was worth looking into more deeply, to be perfectly honest, I’m still torn as to what I should do.

Wednesday’s Highlight of the Week had me spotlighting the interview with the Cryptic Studio’s Matt Miller about CoH/CoV.

I ran across a post from the WoW official forums on Thursday which talked about guild halls, something I had been working up to discussing on the Repairing Gears topic for the past several weeks. Later that day I highlighted some points out of that post for the Repairing Gears topic so that next week I could delve further into specifics.

Finally, rounding out the week I posted a final update on the Dungeon Runner invite status, and much to my surprise, things weren’t slowing down, but were in fact picking up as the time went by. There are still many invites to send out and I’m working on making sure they all get to the appropriate person.

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While perhaps not as busy as last week, plenty was still going on. Let’s do a quick recap.

Monday morning I was stuck without the pictures to post my launch experience as looking back from level 70. However, later that day, I managed to put up the pics, and the story of what happened to me when I tried to snag my copy of the Burning Crusade.

On Tuesday I posted something that I had missed from over the weekend. Remember, the FBI says not to mess with intellectual property or they will come steal your stuff…or something like that.

When Wednesday rolled around I had the Highlight of the Week ready to go, with Sinister Strike’s blue RSS feed, a great tool for catching up with the WoW official forums.

I posted Thursday to ask for an invite if you wanted one to check out Dungeon Runners. I got quite a bit of responses and was busy sending people their codes to play the game. If you sent me an e-mail or commented and haven’t gotten your invite yet give it till over the weekend. I am only allowed to send out a certain number at a time, so after a few more people activate I can continue giving out to others.

I followed that up with the second part in the Repairing Gears series on fixing the World of Warcraft guilding system. This week’s focused mainly on a guild banking system and some simple ways to create it.

Finally, on Friday, I was annoyed by wipes and the people who seem to think they are okay. They aren’t it’s not fun, let’s not do it anymore.

That wraps up this week’s recap. Be sure to come back for the next one.

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This week was pretty busy. So busy, in fact, that I had to move around some features to different days (ok, just one, but I won’t tell if you don’t.) Let’s get down to business though.

On Monday I posted some pictures from playing my main in World of Warcraft (who is currently level 68 and has flight form.)

On Tuesday I was annoyed by high latency on my new server, which seems might possibly be a network related problem and might be fixed (my latency has hovered down a bit now this week.)

On Wednesday I started out with a story about questing in the Burning Crusade. Later that day I gave the Highlight of the Week from WoW Insider on how to quit a guild, and gave some thoughts of my own as well.

On Thursday I talked and talked and talked with the WoW Insider team. I followed that up with the only thing I could find worth mentioning in the January Warhammer Online newsletter.

Early Friday morning I told everyone that there would be a slight delay to the Repairing Gears, it would instead be found today, and not Thursday, due to the interviews that were done. I found out later that my obsessive behavior could have been avoided by downloading the expansion. aMusic then told me that the second issue of AFK Magazine had launched, and I decided to give my review another go. I finished out the day with the Repairing Gears post for this week focusing on the WoW guild system, the first part of an undecided number.

That wraps up this week, be ready for the next.

I won’t lie, there was some slacking off this week. My race to hit 70 in BC has caused me to cut down on real content and stick in filler (read: short, pointless posts that take me a few minutes to write). That isn’t to say I wasn’t able to find some other interesting tidbits and fun stuff.

So, let’s get the ball rolling with Monday, where a mixture of sleep deprivation and eye strain led me directly to filling a post with pictures of adventuring in BC.

Tuesday I figured it was time I started filling in those who unfortunately have not been spending their time playing MMOs. Later that day I wrote the first article of the MMO Primer series.

Wednesday I was able to keep amused with the one-page satire of second life in the Highlight of the Week.

On Thursday morning I was stuck debating whether Dungeon Runners was worth paying for, personally I still believe they should go all the way with no payment to play. Throw some ads in the world and let me dungeon crawl freely. Later that evening we wrapped up the second part of the second Repairing Gears about death penalties in a game.

Finally, Friday rolled around and I found out that CoH/V is giving away even more free stuff, 14 day free trials to be exact. A good deal no matter what game you are currently devoting all your time to.

That’s all for this week (so far), stay tuned for next.

We had a little bit of action this week, considering the launch of the Burning Crusade expansion to World of Warcraft it was especially exciting.

On Monday we started out talking about the Nostromo Speedpad n52 with my first full review of anything. One has to wonder why some of you haven’t gotten your hands on this yet.

Later that day, in anticipation of the Burning Crusade release I talked about how to keep yourself safe when heading out to pick up a copy.

On Tuesday, being far to busy early in the morning to write a long post I only mentioned that I had, and was installing, my copy of the WoW expansion.

Not wanting to leave my readers alone and confused I followed up later in the day with some news about changes to the blog that I was (am?) making.

I followed that up on Wednesday with the first of those changes and the new Highlight of the Week posting which focused on WoW Insider, particularly the covering of their Burning Crusade escapades.

On Thursday the day began with an interview with fellow MMOG blogger Tobold. That night, the first part of a two part article on a death penalty system in games was introduced, explaining the systems to be used as a reference and what shape the design of the system would take.

Finally, Friday morning the news of CoH/CoV’s Double XP weekend was annouced, coming up on the 26th to 28th.

That about wraps it up for this week. Stay tuned for next!

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