Malchome wrote a post this week about his frustration with Cataclysm raiding. It’s become bad enough that he’s just retired from raiding for the rest of the expansion, and it’s not because of having reached an impasse or run out of raiders. No, his issue is that the fights have become too ‘gimmicky’, and one [...]
Archive for August, 2011
Gimmicky raids, and what is to be done with old content?
Posted in general mmo, tagged cataclysm, gimmick, old raids on August 31, 2011 | 38 Comments »
Links and News: SWTOR beta, guilds in GW2, and more
Posted in general mmo, tagged guilds, links on August 29, 2011 | 7 Comments »
This was always promising to be a strong news week, with several devs holding out news releases until last week’s PAX. I think it is tempting if you went to a gaming convention this year to wonder whether the one you were at got better freebies, better announcements, etc. Fortunately I am here to tell [...]
The first three minutes
Posted in general mmo, tagged first three minutes, newbie, tutorial on August 26, 2011 | 13 Comments »
I remember very clearly the first time I ever logged into a multi player game online. It was a MUD that was running on one of the university computers. I’d seen single player text based adventures before, so I played it like one of those, but with other people chatting on text channels in the [...]
Hands up if you will miss your local computer game shop when it’s gone?
Posted in general mmo, tagged bookshop, computer game shop, deus ex, gamestop, retail on August 25, 2011 | 16 Comments »
Anyone? No-one? Is it already gone, or bought out by a large chain that seems intent on running it into the ground? Mine has a couple of shelves of current PC games squeezed into a corner, and then a larger section of low priced budget PC titles and game guides. It’s fairly clear which they [...]
[LOTRO] Levelling an alt, and in which I discover tasks
Posted in general mmo, tagged levelling, tasks, warden. lotro on August 24, 2011 | 10 Comments »
Sunset in the Lonelands. It’s always been a very pretty game … I have been spending time with LOTRO recently; I can’t really explain why but it is my go-to game when I just want to chill out. Everything in this game seems to happen at a slower pace, questing is slower, crafting is slower, [...]
What makes choices fun in games?
Posted in general mmo, tagged choices, fun, swtor on August 23, 2011 | 21 Comments »
I’ve written before that I don’t enjoy complex min/maxing in my RPGs. They often result in the cookie cutter situation where your character will be horribly gimped if you don’t look up the optimal spec/ gear before deciding how to spec/ gear. We’ve also seen via WoW that if the player base believes this to [...]
[WoW] Thoughts on levelling an alt, and poor Tyrande never had a chance
Posted in general mmo, tagged levelling, tyrande, wow on August 18, 2011 | 11 Comments »
Silithus was always empty, even back in the day … I decided to resub to Warcraft for a couple of months after the last patch, I had some time due to the Summer, was curious to see the Firelands, and it’s nice to hang out with my guildies. I don’t expect to stay when the [...]
[Storybricks] Storytelling with an emotive AI
Posted in general mmo, tagged emotive ai, namaste, storybricks on August 17, 2011 | 7 Comments »
The chaps from Namaste are very keen on NPCs with emotions. I had a chance recently to speak with them about the Storybricks toolset, which allows player creators to program AI into NPCs. One of the features which is clearer in use than on some of the slides is that many of the Storybricks verbs [...]
[WoW] Tanking Changes
Posted in general mmo, tagged 4.3, changes, ghostcrawler, tank, threat, wow on August 16, 2011 | 29 Comments »
Ghostcrawler announced some design changes around the threat mechanics via a forum/ blog post today. Basically tanks will be getting an automatic 200% treat increase next patch. It’s mostly due to dps who don’t like having to hold back in instances when they get a lower geared tank. This plays into the issue I was [...]
What we’re playing
-
Recent Comments
-
Recent Posts
[Meta] Help me crowdsource moderation
Posted in general mmo, tagged comments, meta, moderation on August 19, 2011 | 21 Comments »
I very rarely step in to moderate comments on the blog, because it’s very rarely necessary. But I thought it might be interesting to lay the process open for discussion. 1. Allowing a comment in the first place. WordPress allows various options for moderating comments – you can let them all go through, moderate each [...]
Read Full Post »