Daily Blogroll 6/18 — Fun with your new Brad edition

A few days ago, the MMO blogging world burned with the news that rock star MMO developer turned lonely exile, Brad McQuaid, had returned from his lonely, sparse existence of playing video games, racing cars and sports bikes and feeling sorry about the harsh hand life dealt him to urge people to play more Vanguard. Some people were skeptical, but have come to believe. Others forgive him for his sins.
But you know? If that’s really Brad, well, he’s coming off as kind of a jerk in his postings, but I don’t feel he has really done anything more than be a human.
Brian Green of Psychochild’s Blog writes a little about the differences between making money in the real world and making money in World of Warcraft, as promoted by Gevlon the Greedy Goblin, who is apparently a sociopath. The way to success in real life, says Gevlon, can be taught by bilking naive M&S’s of their gold. Not so fast, says Brian. The real world is more fun than that.
Thomas the Friendly Necromancer has compiled a list of all 817 items available via quests, boss fights or just walking around with which to turn your home into a place of awe and comfort. That’s pretty impressive! The Evil Theurgist, by the way, has spotted what looks like an additional two potion bottles in a Wizard 101 video. Does that mean Grizzleheim will bring more levels? The delayed push to the Test server will tell us — next week.
Recently returned-to-Dungeons & Dragons Online cleric Syp discovers that pickup groups are pretty much the same everywhere, and why it’s so hard to find people to play healers when it’s clear they are among the most desired of archetypes. People in pickup groups feel free to do anything, because they know they can always blame the healer when things go wrong.
I still wake up at nights with my skin cold remembering pickup groups as a WoW priest. If someone says “Blackrock Depths” anywhere near me — okay, please, please don’t.
EQ2’s game update 52 brought a whole new quest series to the game leading up to the opening of the ice continent of Velious in the next expansion. Ogrebears has gone through one of them, the Order of Rime quests in Kylong Plains. Kody at Curse Gaming has unearthed the names of that expansion — Sentinel’s Fate.
In the same post, Kody names the next EverQuest expansion as “Underfoot”. The Plane of Underfoot was the realm of the god Brell Serillis that bled through the Living Wall in the Hole to destroy the evil city of Old Paineel in times past. So it’s good to see we might finally be able to travel to the other side of that mysterious gate.
Is it possible to Rickroll an entire server? Stargrace says yes, yes it is, but the jokers soon found out that if you play with fire, you’re gonna get burned.
A lot of people, myself included, are oooh-ing and aaah-ing over Aion’s distillation of a bunch of MMO tropes into a new and exciting mix, but are we all just succumbing to the sort of hype that caused so much turmoil last year? Hudson warns that looks alone won’t sell a new game, and the actual play could be just the same old grind.
Syncaine wonders why they don’t just let veteran WoW players start at or near max level, and have special newbie servers for new players or those who want to experience abandoned older content with other people? He has a point — the day is coming when a new player will ding level 2, say to themselves, “great, just 98 more levels until I can do all the stuff I keep reading about,” and log off forever.
Lastly, beta invites for city-building MMO Cities XL have started going out, and Massively has beta keys for you. Better get started with the construction. I hereby claim Dubai as a city name…
Hey, it’s Thursday, so if you hear Thor, the god of thunder, rumbling up in the sky, hold your clenched fist high as you rush bravely into battle — or wherever your day takes you.

9 thoughts on “Daily Blogroll 6/18 — Fun with your new Brad edition”

Argh curse you you almost got me. That was close. Here I was thinking I was about to read about a ban but I almost got Rick Rolled. Luckily my Blackberry has the crappiest browser in the world

Doh. I fell for it.

Does it count if you open the ‘roll in a new tab but stop yourself before tabbing to it?

I totally got Rick Rolled by Tipa. 🙂 I have been pondering “The Grind” lately, since it seems that it comes up a lot since the announcement of FF14 and with Aion’s NDA lift. While my initial reaction to grindy gameplay is to groan and think “not again”. However, thinking about it, has there ever been an MMO that wasn’t grindy? I don’t have much EVE experience, so that may be an exception, but I guess what I am getting at is that if Aion is a grind, who am I to complain, since Eq1, Eq2, FFXI, WoW, Vanguard, etc all also feature grindy gameplay and yet I love those games.
When I first played WoW it was great because I was finishing up my degree and being able to solo kept me progressing, despite not having hours and hours to sink into it at night. Another thing that I really liked was that I was questing in areas and it was taking me all around the area, as opposed to sitting in one spot camping mobs every time they spawn. In EQ and FFXI thats just what you did. You looked for/formed a party and you headed out to an area and picked out a camp and you sat there until the group broke up. No exploring or seeing the sights in an area.
One could say “Hey! You can explore on your own time. Grouping time is for efficient exp gain!” and thats not totally off base to say, but my initial wonder with WoW was that I was able to explore the world WHILE I was leveling up. So in that respect, the grind in modern wow-likes is a lot easier to swallow than in older MMO games.
All of that being said though, I find myself really missing the days of EQ. Having a steep level curve was brutal at times, but for me it just made getting that next level all the more rewarding. Thats a problem these days. There is less reward, or inherent value in things. It took me years to reach level 30 with my ranger in EQ ( hey, I was busy exploring ). On the contrary, people have multiple max level characters in WoW. Reaching max level in WoW means very little really. However, reaching max level back in the old days of EQ was a badge of honor.
I dunno. Maybe some day someone will invent a brilliant hybrid system that satisfies everyone, but until then I will just continue to play what is fun, and if grindy gameplay causes me to lose interest, well, thats just the way it goes. 🙂

Argh, you got me.

Mmmh…
Blackrock Depths ?
Huhuhuhu =p

I have rose-tinted goggles towards old-school MMO leveling as well rob. One thing that we’ve largely lost as MMOs have become more casual friendly are the social oppurtunities we had in “camping mobs in one spot” with other players. I was much more social and made many new friends in older MMOs like EQ. It’s much harder to do these days. That said, I do remember the times where it might take an hour or two to get a group, and I can’t believe I ever put up with that. Warhammer is fail on many levels, but their Public Quest and Open Warband system is just awesome. Keeps the casual atmosphere we have today, while easily opening up the opportunity to join groups of random people whom you might want to become friends with. I’m hoping it becomes widespread eventually in other MMOs.