Tokens have been fantastically popular in recent MMOs. The wonder of tokens is that they perfectly map onto grindy play. Why we love tokens: They’re less random. You know exactly how many times you need to kill a mob in order to have access to the gear you want. But you will not have to [...]
Archive for April, 2009
Tokens! And why Ulduar-10 is a problem
Posted in general mmo, warcraft, tagged 10 man raids, 10 man tokens, blizzard, tokens, ulduar, why we hate tokens, why we like tokens, worthless on April 12, 2009 | 11 Comments »
Why can’t magic in games feel more magical?
Posted in general mmo, storytelling, tagged casters, feeling magical, immersion, magic, society of wizards, wizard 101 on April 11, 2009 | 9 Comments »
Although I like my warlock alt, playing him is not an immersive experience. You sit at the back, you hit buttons to cast your spells, but you might as well be firing a gun or throwing stones — the ‘magic’ is just a veneer. There is no sense of being a student of an ancient [...]
Let’s Get Physical
Posted in geekery, tagged anti-shark, cables, international standards, internet connection, physical layer, tat-8, tat-9, telco on April 10, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
When you’re playing an online game, it’s easy to forget that there’s a lot of cable, exchanges, and other telecomms hardware between you and the other players. (Hence title: in network parlance, we call the cables ‘the physical layer’ of the OSI model). We had some connection blips this Wednesday. A lot of players from [...]
Why we should care about Free Realms #1
Posted in general mmo, storytelling on April 9, 2009 | 2 Comments »
Free Realms, Sony’s kid-marketed casual-friendly new MMO is due to be released on PC later this month. It’s been on my radar as the only game on the horizon likely to give Warcraft a run for its money because it ticks all the right boxes. Plus you can play for free. I’m not big on [...]
Being the big damn hero!
Posted in general mmo, tagged being heroic in games, immersion, narrative tricks, skill, the escapist on April 9, 2009 | 12 Comments »
Mal: Well, look at this! Appears we got here just in the nick of time. What does that make us? Zoe: Big damn heroes, sir! Mal: Ain’t we just? — Firefly There’s a great article at The Escapist about tricks that designers use to make you feel heroic when you’re actually just piloting a bunch [...]
5 Steps to Raid Tanking Assignments
Posted in warcraft, tagged main tank, naxxramas tank assignments, off tank, raid assignments, tank assignments on April 8, 2009 | 6 Comments »
Congratulations, you’re in a raid. Someone has asked you to organise the tanking assignments. Don’t panic if you’ve never done this before, it’s pretty simple compared to sorting out the heals This is assuming a PvE raid. You can assign tasks in PvP too but it’s more likely to change on the fly. Assignments are [...]
Are older servers just different?
Posted in general mmo, tagged community, day 1, mature community, new server, old server on April 7, 2009 | 4 Comments »
I was amused to find out earlier this week that my WoW guild is one of the oldest in Europe. I’m not sure how they knew, but it sounds plausible. It was a day 1 guild (ie. formed on the first day the server went live) on a day 1 server (opened on the day [...]
Space, The Final Frontier
Posted in general mmo, storytelling, tagged federation, jumpgate evolution, klingon, space mmo, space opera, star wars the old republic, stwor, twitch based on April 4, 2009 | 7 Comments »
Space is big. Really big. Also it’s black which makes it easy to render on archaic PCs. This does make me wonder why there aren’t more sci-fi/space opera style MMOs. Aside from EVE, which intrigues me but has been described as a spreadsheet in space with the learning curve from hell, there is not a [...]
How do you get your server news?
Posted in general mmo, tagged gossip, gossip mechanic, guild news, pvp news, raid news, server news on April 3, 2009 | 11 Comments »
Do you care what other players are doing on your server? Part of the appeal of MMOs is the whole massively multiplayer setup. Even when you are playing solo, you know there are many others online. You run past toons who are actually real people and not codebotted NPCs. You hear them chattering and arguing [...]
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