I HAS PC

Lots of little gaming going on. Will touch upon them.

1) LOTRO revisted: While I am trying to organize friends to go through the trial, nothing concrete is set up although a little interest and a couply people hopping on Brandywine. I said this before and I will say it again – the fact that LOTRO doesn’t allow you to play their two new classes WITHOUT buying MoM is a terrible design decision and puts me in a bad mood immediately at the character creation screen. I wanted to test drive the Warden for the trial again – it made my list of favorite fantasy classes although I only got to level 10. My beef with this is that the characters start at the exact same spot as the previous character classes so not having them available upon start is just a silly money grab. I am trialling the game to see if I am going to resubscribe – let me choose the character I want to play. The high end zones included in MoM have no impact on the class selection – it will be months before I even get to MoM – so let me play them dammit! To be fair, they do  have a 10 day trial for MoM – but on the welcome back weekend I can use my old box (that I paid for). Maybe I do want to resub, and maybe the game is fun enough to buy the expansion (when I get there) – but it will be awhile before I get there, and I want to do it as one of the new classes. We are off to a poor start, me and LOTRO. So I rolled a Champion, and if all goes well I am going to have to drop $40 bucks on an expansion and reroll to a character class I want to play. Shame on you, Turbine.

More random stuff after the break.

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I have been away for a week for work – and the inevitable happened. I ran into an old friend, conversation ensues, and WoW comes up. He plays it too. We chat about raiding, levelling, guilds, etc and the topic shifts to gaming together on the ultimate cruise ship.

Things are starting to sound fun, when he pulls ultra geek on me and proudly shows me his WoW tshirt underneath his sweatshirt.

For the Horde!

Damn, I play Alliance. Dreams are shattered. Mood turns negative. I secretly envy the shirt.

Then I think – why not?

In the facebookesque MMO, which discourages meaningful choice, insists on bringing the player and not the class , encourages most classes to have two role options, allows name, sex, appearance and server customizatiom, AND trounces it’s own lore in the name of fun and convenience (all the while producing a pretty fun game) – are we really that far away from bringing the player and not the race?

Horde and Alliance notables already work together in cutscenes. Main cities can still be off limits as there is an “uneasy” truce – battlegrounds are explained as efforts for the most ardent of same side supporters and opposite race haters.

The sympathizers from each faction can form guilds and defeat enemies side by side, while political figures and notable npc’s can choose to support the merge or rally against it.

A little programming to ensure cross faction chat doesn’t work in Arenas and Battlegrounds will do the trick.

Really, why not?

This is my 99th post. I was going to wait and do something for the Centennial Post, but after my Montreal Canadiens had a tragic end to their 100th season, and I lost a pretty daring, yet silly bet around it, I think the 100 mark is one of tradgedy, and curses. Not luck and prosperity.

99th post musings after the break.

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Here I go again on my own.

Help me like Lord of the Rings Online.

I don’t need long winded posts epousing how good the game is. You probably, if playing the game, don’t feel like you need to explain why it is so good. I don’t need convincing by any means.

I need company. After the break.

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A little snippet about game design from Blizzards almightly Lead Game Designer, Ghostcrawler.

“Do you know how many professional game designers I know who were trained as game designers? Zero. I imagine that will change over time though. This is, happily, one of the few industries where talent > experience > education. “

 One of his atypical responses to angry forum posters making fun of design decisions because he was trained as an oceanographer. The entire thread, if you dare so brave the WoW forums, can be found here.

I am not writing this to pick on Ghostcrawler. I don’t care where he came from, or what degree he has, or how he got to where he is right now. I am going to analyze that statement of his to have a closer look – only because I want to know if that is true. It is a pretty bold statement from the man at the helm of the ultimate cruise ship experience. He may even be right - but i’m not so sure. Truth searching after the break.

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I just received an email invite to a closed, alpha stage MMO beta test. I love beta testing. I love seeing a game grow from crap to less-crap-yet-not-ready-for-release-but-released-anyhow. I love interacting with devs on their life’s work (pre crunch time, of course. Once they hit the crunch they all become crabby). I love going into a new world and trying to contribute to the development process (usually, only to be ignored). Well, chalk another one up on my list of beta tests, and soon as the NDA lifts (ugh, could be a long one) I’ll be sure to be nice.

Okay, that’s a lie. I always prefer to be fashionably late.

I know the Jeff Kaplan interview at GDC is very old news. While I had a lot of thought about it at the time, it was mostly the rehash of the same old stuff already out there, and not until I made it into WOTLK with my Shaman re-roll did I really start to re think – and re think about writing about it. I am doing the same quests he designed. Now that we have settled that I am not FOX or CNN with breaking news, let’s discuss.

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I feel so verklempt.

“Let’s go for a coffee” is part of our society. Typically you pick either a greasy spoon, or some fancy overpriced brand variety, and go, sit, drink coffee, and chit chat with a friend (or friends) for a few hours. It could be a date, or just a catch up session with an old pal. Most people do this, most people enjoy this, and the details are in the simplicity of the activity. Hot drinks, good people, and an open ended conversation. It is as American as apple pie, and as Canadian as hockey. It is probably also as French as smoking. More Coffee Talk after the break.

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While navigating the great interwebs of blogs and fansites I came accross this little gem. Simply put, it is a data mining site for WoW. I love data, and in our grand world of MMO secrecy, more data is always good. Since it is straight from the Armory you would have to believe it carries with it some statistical accuracy, and the author typically points out on his various posts where shortcomings may be.

Data makes me drool. More drooling after the break.

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