Prepare to be boarded!

Amidst a sea of feverish dreams, I have a vague memory of having completed a very silly quest line in Pirates of the Burning Sea all to do with your own true love. And a spool through my screenshot archive proves that it really happened … (incidentally you are free to pick male or female [...]

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Dragon Age 2 Demo!

Yesterday, Bioware released the Dragon Age 2 demo into the wild (link is for the PC version, PS3 and Xbox versions available through usual console mechanisms) with the promise that if one million people downloaded it across all platforms, there will be some extra goodies in game for everyone. They’re already up to over 400k [...]

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And … let’s talk about choosing characters in Rift!

How time flies when you’re having fun in betas. Before you know it, tomorrow is head start day for Rift and even though I’m run off my feet at the moment with flu (which sucks, don’t get it!) and various other games such as the Darkspore beta and Tuesday night Spreadsheet-Pirates I have been getting [...]

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Thought of the day: Games to play when you’re feeling down

I saw in a news story this week that researchers think playing casual games, such as Bejewelled,  can reduce symptoms of depression. Admittedly the research was underwritten by Popcap (makers of Bejewelled) but at the same time, these are the sorts of games I could imagine playing if I were to wake up in the [...]

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Male and female NPC armour in Rift

These characters are both Meridian Centurions guarding the main Defiant city in Rift. So the ranks and roles are equivalent. And yet the guy gets a full set of studded armour and the girl gets a skimpy bikini. The actual player gear is fine, but this NPC armour difference is really pushing it. I think [...]

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Social Capital #2 pt2: More on how we build connections in MMOs

One thing that’s clear about the forms of interaction I discussed in the last post is that they all date back to the very earliest days of MMOs. Emotes, buffs, cooperating or competing with other players in game  all go right back to the start of the genre. It was a time when devs would [...]

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Social Capital #2: How we make connections in MMOs

Last week I was writing about communities in games, different types of communities, and why strong social capital is a good thing for both games and players. Next week, I’m going to talk about the challenge of building strong, long term communities. This post is more focussed on the nuts and bolts of player interaction. [...]

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A birthday party and cosmetic clothing in WoW

My guild in WoW had it’s sixth birthday last weekend – that takes it back to approximately the EU opening day on a day 1 server. (A day 1 server means one of the original WoW servers that was opened when the game was launched.) Sounds like a good excuse for a party! So we [...]

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MMO nostalgia aka why you couldn’t pay me to play EQ

I’ve heard a lot of excited talk on the MMO blogs I read about the new EQ progression server. Yes, you too could travel back in time and experience what it was like to play a game with crappy graphics, arsey raiders, and where it was considered normal to camp a rare spawn for 17 [...]

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There is a Lt that Never Goes Out…

…Well, until he does. Repeatedly. To set the scene, the Lieutenant of Barad Guldur is the current final boss in LotRO. He rides a fell beast, and he’s /actually/ a Nazgul. Yes, we get to fight a Nazgul in Book 1, but not to actually kill one until the end of the Mirkwood content. It’s [...]

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