It’s All Just TOO Difficult!

Pope here. Today Blizzard announced major changes to the mount structure. Most notable amongst the changes is that flying mounts will now be accessed at level 60. Normal flying will be 150% speed instead of 60% like it has been since flying mounts were launched. Wow. What’s more: Blizzard is now including a portal from…

Repetitive Monetization Theoretics

Newsflash: MMO’s make you grind. (That new, informative and ground breaking statement should win me a blog-pulitzer, or blog-nobel, I am certain of it.) Follow Up: People tend to not like grind. MMOment of Truth: Grind equals profits for companies (both in the form of longer sub fee collection, and minimizing development costs) Sad Truth:…

What is Hurting WoW’s Polish?

Warning – Fanboi’s may attack! WoW has changed. Change is sometimes a good thing, and I’m not going to belabor the obvious changes (less challenge) or industry misconceptions (subs are needed to cover ongoing costs) instead, I am going to look at two things I have noticed the most since my foray back into WoW. First, to stave of…

Un-Expectations

I took my 4 year old son and my wife (or did they take me?) to the movie UP! over the weekend. First off, I am loving the glorious 3D action that is making it’s way back into theaters. It is good to see the industry figuring out that if you don’t enhance the experience, it’s…

An Idea…

First off, big thanks to Chris for letting me post here.  I had this thought rolling around in my head, but no real spot to post it (my regular readership on my blog wouldn’t really get it).  Unbeknownst to him, Chris actually touched on the problem I’m looking at in this post in his “welcome”…

Introducing (the) Pope

A friend of mine is going to start adding a post or two, here or there on this site. The thought came by in a discussion – he reads a lot of gaming blogs and wouldn’t mind sharing his thoughts. I thought it would be fun to give him an outlet. I have known Pope…

Bing Vs. Google

Bing Search: I has PC 1.       Lack of consistency on offence, defence has PC’s Welsh in bind.. 2.       Dell’s All-in-One PC Has the Guds, Design to Compete with iMac… 3.       I HAS PC 4.       Property: HAS PC member – semanticweb.org.. 5.       Motorola’s Renew has PC Magazine’s GreenTech Seal of Approval.. Google Search: I has PC…

Can the End Game be the Game?

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…

Yay Spam?

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…

More From the Mine

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…

Skills Baby

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. …

How My Alpha Game Testing is Going. Check.

Cool premise? Check. Decent art direction? Check. Story and Lore? Check. WoW treadmill/quest hub/kill ten rats style gameplay? Check. As the business expert Jimmy John Shark would say if 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…

Safari

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…

Where I Have Been

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…

Why Can’t We Be Friends?

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,…

99 Red Balloons

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.…

Whitesnake

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.…

Gloating I Will Soon Regret

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…