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Thinking About Other MMOs? Me, Too
It started when World of Warcraft was released and it didn't take long for me to become an obsessed fan, a hardcore player spending hours upon hours in Azeroth every day. Lately though, I've burned out and play less than ever. The thing is, I miss adventure.
Have you ever thought about playing another massively multi-player online game (MMO)?
I have.
And it isn't difficult to understand a large number of WoW players are casual gamers. It should come as no surprise that, for a game we subscribe to monthly, many players put a lot of time into their characters.
Do casual gamers get tired of playing the same game even though they invest fewer hours per week?
Unbeknown to myself, I recently discovered a plethora of MMO choices floating around the Internet. No doubt some of you have heard of games such as Vanguard or Warhammer, games which were supposed to dethrone World of Warcraft after their release (yet failed to do so). But how many of you have heard of the game
Perfect World International
, the English adaptation of a popular Chinese MMO sequel? It's a free to pla
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Breaking News: Applebee's to Open Up In Storm Peaks!
The following is based on completely true facts. No part of this story has been doctored in any way, shape or form.
“Yes! Home from class early.” I run into my room and throw my bag on the floor, and jump on my computer. “Come on you stupid computer, load faster.” I put in my user name and password and off I go—I log in to find my Paladin in Storm Peaks, just where I had left him. “Alright, time to get my artisan flying, stop being lazy,” I tell myself, but who am I to kid? It’s not going to happen anytime soon. Too many shiny things to buy, so little gold to spend on them! I mount up; grab the reins of my…wooden mechanical flying machine, and whoooosh! Off I go at a moderate pace into the abyss.
Creak, crack, clank goes my flying machine. I’ve loved this thing since the day I spent way too much gold at the auction house to craft it. How I daydream as I’m flying towards Naxxramas and all my guild mates are flying past me at incredible speeds of the day I get to fly my epic mechanical flying machine, complete with hula girl doll, wind whipping through my long, flowing beard. Maybe if I just paint the face myself, and
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Gamers Are Normal? Shh, Don't tell!
Do you know someone who plays games, but isn't really a gamer? I've met a lot of what I like to call “normal” people in Azeroth. But wait, normal you say? Playing World of Warcraft?
How can this be?!
All kinds of people play WoW. People who are new to online gaming, or video and computer games period, have been constantly flocking toward what I consider the most full-featured and accessible MMO built to date. The number of people who had, previously, never ventured beyond Solitaire on Windows 3.1 is impressive. Now they're raiding and getting phat lewtz every week. How awesome is that?
Of course, everyone knows we gamers are far from normal. We fly around on mystical dragons, take magic carpet rides, and yes--we even have neighbors who waggle when they walk (sometimes named
Noxychu
).
So what exactly is normal when we're all responsible for this madness?
What exactly do you define as a “normal” person? Do you hide your gaming habits from others?
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'Warcraft' Helps Swine Flu Researchers
Some of you might remember the
Sang vicié
pandemic from a few years back, when
Hakkar
became the Number 1 cause of death throughout the entire World of Warcraft.
Some of you (mostly those living in the Americas I guess) might be thinking about the recent
Swine Flu
H1N1 outbreak, which is still a reason for a lot of worries among most families in not only the Americas, but other continents as well.
But have you even imagined that the two events may not only be similar in character, but that the players' behaviour during Hakkar's madness could be used by U.S. Department of Homeland Security? Well, it's not only possible, but it's happening!
Read on to find out what
MyFox National
posted.
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In-Game Casinos — Legal?
I wrote this blog a little while ago, so the topic may be a little played out. But
Malgayne
just got around to publishing it—so blame him!
Blizzard announced earlier this year that their policy on running an in-game casino had changed. For three years, the policy had been that an in-game casino was against their Terms of Use. For the full story, click
here
.
Originally, running casinos was banned altogether. Now, their stance on it is that "they do not represent a violation" of their Terms of Use, but you could not
spam
advertisements or scam players. In a more recent post, found
here
, Blizzard decided to ban advertisements altogether due to two reasons: one, because the advertisements were going out of hand; and two, because players expressed their disapproval over this.
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World of...Papercraft?
So Malgayne has finally succumbed—and given me
POWAH
! Behold my fearsome wrath! All shall tremble before my might! Or...at least...my...blogging? *cough* Anyways, moving on to the actual post:
I would like to introduce a man to you, known as "Pascal." He is a "papercrafter" and has recently done an interview for Blizzard EU which can be viewed
here
. Some of his models he has created include: Thrall, a Kodo, a Gnome, an Abomination, and a golem. It's really amazing stuff that he does. The Thrall model, for instance, required
32
standard size pages. Imagine how long it takes to make these! This guy certainly has my respect.
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Taking an MMO Vacation? Come Back Soon!
Did you know over 11.5 million people were subscribed to World of Warcraft
before
the Ulduar 3.1 patch was released? Imagine how many more players have come back to the game since. It never ceases to amaze me how many people share in our joy playing what has become, apparently, the top massively multi-player online (MMO) game in the world.
What is it that attracts so many people for so long?
I'm not really sure myself. I love the atmosphere, the lore, and the friends I've made in-game. No matter what time of the week, month, or year I can always find something to do in Azeroth. In fact, I'm so Azeroth-ed out that I actually think I need an MMO vacation. Of course, I know whenever I get bored or a new patch is released, I always seem to come back.
Has the game ever gone stale for you? Been bored or took a break? What is it that keeps you coming back (or do you just love visiting Wowhead)?
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Small Change
I was writing a bit recently on the nature of memory, and something occurred to me.
You remember that Level 60 Troll Warrior that gave you the last couple of gold you needed to buy your mount back when you were level 40?
I sure do, but the sad part is, I'm sure he doesn't remember you.
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My Problem with Varian Wrynn
As someone who "grew up" as Alliance,
Bolvar Fordragon
(shown here in his old digs at Stormwind Keep) was something of a fixture in the Alliance and generally his storyline, quests and dialog seemed to be pretty well-written. Aside from that, many of us appreciated how awesome he was when we first saw him fighting off the
Onyxia's Elite Guard
that were hiding in the keep, surrounding Bolvar.
These days, we're looking at
Varian Wrynn
instead. I didn't think too much of it when Wrynn first showed up, but then I read up on his lore and I found myself rather unhappy with the general nature of the story and his background. My gut reaction was to dismiss the lore behind him as being simply
badly written
. I wouldn't have a problem with him if the story didn't have the somewhat perplexing sense of an attempted shoe-horn of a new character into WoW. I use the word perplexing because the word was used by the loquacious, frenetic and not-sa
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GDC 2009
A little while ago, as some of you may know, I was at
GDC
San Francisco (Game Developers Conference), and while there, I learned a lot about gamer culture.
Now, E3 is and always has been a press event—an event where game companies get to show off the new cool stuff that they're doing to the public and to each other. GDC, though, is an industry event—where it's mostly about meeting other people in the industry, awarding innovation in games, and the new middleware type stuff that's out there. Being someone who works in the game industry, and only a short drive away from San Francisco, I just had to be there.
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Sci-Fi MMOs?
So I found an article on
Massively
a little while ago that talked about the dearth of good sci-fi MMOs on the market, and postulated some reasons why this might be. I love sci-fi, I was hooked on Star Wars at an early age (sorry Trekkies), and I've often wondered about the same thing—you can see the evidence of it in earlier blogs, like
this one
which refers to
EVE Online
. The article, if you're interested, is
here
.
Now there are a lot of interesting ideas posed in this article, some of which I agree with and some of which I don't. But what I really found interesting was the recently posted response on TechRadar,
here
.
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Dark Riders, Tree Branches, & Evil Dudes--Oh, My!
My goal in writing entries such as this remains simple: to encourage readers to get back in the game and do those quests they never even knew existed, to explore and go where no other has so boldly gone before, and to come back here to tell us about their experiences or interpretations. If you like reading these entries help spread the word--it's bird! Er, blog--I MEAN BLOG! Tell your friends about our blog!
In my last entry I covered a lot of information concerning the history and origins of worgen. There is a plethora of lore surrounding the worgen and I fear we only got a glimpse of it last time. Follow along this week as we tackle the Dark Riders, Scythe of Elune, and some sinister wizard-wannabes, the likes of which you've always hated when leveling up. Ugh!
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WoW Haiku!
A long time ago, at the height of my raiding career in Burning Crusade, I sat down and wrote the following sublime piece of poetry:
Raiding DPS
I hope you are a warlock
No? GTFO
I encourage you to contribute your own to my list of WoW haiku. The standard format is 5-7-5, and the person who contributes the best one may or may not win a gold plated skateboarding whale.
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Mommy, Where Does QQ Come From?
A little while ago I had a conversation with a user that got me thinking.
He was talking for a bit about how he didn't want Wowhead to turn into WowSpace, and that while he granted that the forums were a great addition to Wowhead, he also expressed frustration about troll posters, feeling that they caused the Wowhead forums to bring the overall quality of Wowhead down, rather than up.
Now, I don't mean to suggest that this user was QQing. He was expressing his honest opinion and I respect him for it. But it started to make me think about the nature of people, and why we complain about the things we do.
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There's No Such Thing as a Cheap Lunch
I feel like I might have been a little too down on PvP last time, so I'd like to continue my Street Fighter metaphor from my
last post
. To that end, I have a shocking revelation for many of you:
“Being cheap” doesn't exist in competitive games.
I, like everyone else, have fallen repeatedly to rogues in PvP situations where I've been simply stunlocked from 100% health until I die, and frequently even by rogues that have worse gear or are lower level than me, just like I've lost against people in Street Fighter that do nothing but jump kick/sweep.
We all know that classes have had balance issues in the past, and will continue to have balance issues in the future (though some might argue they're worse now than they have been), Blizzard isn't perfect, but when you get demolished in PvP by a Death Knight, ask yourself: Do you say, “Oh, well, it's a DK, so it doesn't count” or do you say, “Hmm, okay, what can I do differently next time to increase my odds of winning?”
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Worgen - E.D. With Attitude
They are fearless. They are many. They are entire dimensions from home.
I'm talking about worgen, a race of wolf-men creatures which somewhat contrast the nature-loving furbolg (read about those furries
here
). Worgen are extra-dimensional creatures, as best our undead friends can tell, which exist for the sole purpose of destroying anything and everything they encounter. They were thought to be tame, or at least tame enough to be controlled for the purposes of good, but the worgen secretly mutinied against their new found masters.
Despite differences between furbolg, worgen, and myself there's one thing we all share in common—
we're really hungry!
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The Secret Dungeon!
So by now I can imagine just about everyone has seen the preview for the new Ulduar raid dungeon.
If you haven't, you can find it here:
http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/wrath/ulduar.xml
Once again Blizzard provides us with a walking tour of some of their most epic locations. It's beautiful work, and I'm really excited to see it in action—one of the things that I especially like about World of Warcraft is the architecture, and the Titan architecture is my favorite of all.
What really blows my mind about all this, though, is how good Blizzard is at keeping secrets.
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Player vs. Street
I never got particularly into fighting games. Until fairly recently, I could never pull off any of the special moves with any amount of regularity, let alone ridiculously complicated combos, and without being able to do the move you want to do, suddenly you're not competing against the person you're sitting next to or against a computer, you're competing against your own hand eye coordination. I'm not down on personal tests of hand eye coordination, but I generally dislike situations in which I'm faced with a challenge that I need to surpass to even be able to compete on the same level as someone else.
That's why I'm so excited about Street Fighter 4. According to my brief experiences playing it (it only was released for consoles on the 17th), and what I've read about it, it seems like they're trying to move away from complicated special moves and combos, and towards predicting what the opponent is going to do, and reacting to it before they can do it.
I guess what I'm really trying to say here is that I don't particularly like PvP.
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That Darn Furbolg
Some 10,000 years ago
Krasus
, revered mage of the
Kirin Tor
and a member of The Six who oversee
Dalaran
, negotiated an alliance between earthen, tauren, night elves, and a mysterious bear-man race who supposedly originated in
Northrend
. The alliance proved successful against the Burning Legion for the time being. Over the years these bear-men, given the term furbolg, befriended the night elves and tauren. The night elves found nurturing allies in the furbolg as they were invaluable for their knowledge of the moonlit forests. However, the Burning Legion would not let this truce go unhindered for long.
Our blog entry today deals with the furbolg. I bet a lot of you have seen them in-game, whether you recognized them or not. Through time, I have learned to appreciate some of the finer points of lore and I think these creatures are simply fascinating. Some of you may be curious about what a furbolg is and why exactly I am obsessed with them. Well, who cares!
THEY HAVE FUR AND CLAWS!
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Elekktion Day
I'd like you to meet my good friend World of Warcraft. We've been friends for about two years now, off and on.
I could talk about all the positive qualities that my friend WoW has, that he's always available to hang out when I'm free, that he's got a bunch of other friends, invites me to parties, all those things.
More than anything though, I've always thought WoW was awesome because WoW
wants me to succeed
.
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