I HAS PC

MMO gamers seem to be lamenting the fact that everything starts at the “endgame” in current mmo-land. The grind/level mechanics exist mostly to slow you down to getting to a point where you can start having fun. While that sounds back-ass-wards, the common argument in support is traditionally “Developers can’t create enough content to keep up with the players”.

I don’t disagree entirely. Developers can’t create the current type of content to keep up – or can they? I am not going to get into alternate schemes (where players are the content) or anything crazy or off the wall – I’m just going to look at our good friend WoW and understand where all their content – and developer hours – went into their game. After the break of course.

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Time to level ol’ Couchon again.

Tyson winking at you was scary back then, too

So much to get excited about, I’m not sure where to begin.

With that in mind I will begin here.

Followed up with:

And discussion after the break.

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Druids about to see a popularity increase?

Credit: The old Wowinsider.com

Oh, the joys of Askimet.

After the break, I’ll show you my latest and greatest last 10 spam messages which were caught by the automatic filter. I “de-linked” them but kept everything else in tact (yes, there are some URLs in there – plenty, actually) so if SPAM makes you sick, or you do not have the capability to NOT copy and paste a link after the break, don’t go after the break.

I don’t fully understand spam. I just don’t understand how anyone would be even remotely interested in clicking links, especially when they are framed in the context as they are. I am sure there is some other point to it all – and even by posting them maybe I committed the ultimate evil. Anyway, if you dare, go read what our spam-friends are putting out there – albeit a very small sample – after the cut.

EDIT – i did mess up the URL stuff just in case listing them as is will help them on search engines, etc.

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Not of Moira. Sorry LOTRO fans.

I hope Zardoz doesn’t end up getting sick of me linking to his posts, but data gets me all hot and heavy. WoW data is always fun, and a couple weeks ago he posted his Minority Report outlining level 80 class allocation at 3.1.1. His sampling methods are reasonable so let’s look at who is playing what.

It’s actually not a bad spread, when you take out the top 2 and bottom 3. I would suppose the goal, with 10 classes, is to have each around 10% of the playerbase. That would be a great indication of balanced and interesting classes. 4 of the 10 are +/- .5% from that equal mark, with a couple glaringly high and 3 glaringly low. 

If you were a developer I wonder how they would take that info to adjust the classes (if they even thought it was needed) – Would you try to Jaxx up the Shaman/Rogue/Lock to pull from DK’s and Pallys specifically, or just work harder to make sure those classes are more fun, interesting, and useful on their own merits?

Not going to dig too far into it today, perhaps if discussion arises – just putting it out there as fun information to look at.

Suzina over at KTR posts about a couple recent gaming experiences in LOTRO. It’s a good read for several reasons, but mostly because it captures the essence of what is great about MMO’s – success and failure. I shared a snazzy yet true golf analogy in the comments section about “hooks”. MMO’s live on hooks. 

Psychochild made a comment in the thread about the beauty of Suz’s post (we are tight like that where I can nickname her unashamedly.) and that those are experiences you can’t have in single player games – and my first reaction was that he was right, followed up with a “wait, is he?” The answer is yes and no. Suspense suspended after the cut.

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Cool premise? Check. Decent art direction? Check. Story and Lore? Check.

WoW treadmill/quest hub/kill ten rats style gameplay? Check.

I suppose developers still don’t understand what “different” is. If every other entrepreneur didn’t figure it out either, we would still be cranking our cars with a handle out the front grill to get them started.

I know. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it – right? What if a large group of consumers actually thought it was broken?

Losing will to help out said developer by seriously testing the alpha stage? Check.

I have switched my browser from good ol’ MSIE 8.0 (the new version) to Safari. I know many out there Firefox it, maybe even Google Chrome, but I just like basic functionality (and not having to learn new things all the time.)

I didn’t download it purposely, I am a big fan of the iPhone and it kept prompting me to download it. I also have a ME.com account (great for the iDisk alone) and since it works better in Safari, and everytime iTunes wanted to download an update to work with my phone it prompted me for Safari. So I finally downloaded it. 

I am pretty impressed.

Something about the font and color choices they use make every webpage POP. It just presents so nicely. I am sure that is why long time users love it – visually it is just so darn impressive. I only run a couple things that require AX, which I hear Safari doesn’t do, but I have good old’ MSIE to use that with.

MSIE just upgraded to 8.0, and not only does it seem to take forever to boot up but it just runs slow. Plus it feels it is necessary to open 2 tabs everytime (the main page, and a LIVE search tab) which also makes it run slow.

Now, I have little experience with other browsers (I did beta Chrome, but didn’t bother with it afterwards – I don’t mind minimalistic as long as full feature functionality is available) so here I am making my first blog post in Safari and it looks real pretty.

Any of you have experiences with Firefox, et al? I half feel I am cheating on my wife with an evil Apple application, but I can’t get over how good she looks, and how fast she works.

I have been working on a pretty big acquisition of a company past few weeks. Haven’t had much time to sleep, let alone blog. I did have the option of completely neglecting my family – but chose to neglect the blog instead. Little bit of a shame as I was having extra fun blogging throughout April and into May.

I am so out of the loop on blogging and gaming news – any new MMO’s flop lately? Any juicy industry rumours or gossip?

I need to go make the blog rounds to stay current. I’ll put more effort into here this week, I certainly could use the break and distraction.