I work not half a mile from the house where Samuel Clemens wrote that book, and the book is my “bus book” I read on the way to and from work, and when I saw the lines about dragons and raids, well….
Anyway, lots of people are still waiting in queues in Aion. I think enough has been said about that, and I don’t ding NCsoft for going easy on the servers to start off. (Rer has some ideas on what to tell friends who might be reluctant to try Aion because of queues and other things). Nothing worse than making a million servers and then closing half of them in a couple of months after people go back to WoW. Because you KNOW they will. In the MMO space, WoW is like this huge dark star in the middle of the system. You can travel to another planet for a visit, but unless you nail your feet to the ground, that dark WoW star’s gonna pull you back.
Seems only natural to want to work there. After all, if they already have your soul, might as well make them pay for the privilege. That’s what Ixobelle thought, fresh back from Japan, as he drove to Blizzard headquarters in Irvine, California, with $500 worth of full color, 27 page booklets outlining his painstakingly designed raid dungeon, the Castle of Baron von Lupus. If that doesn’t sound like a natural fit for the new Worgen PC race, what does? Not knowing any Blizzard employees well enough to get through the front gate, he set up a table and sign across the street, hoping for a response. Did it pay off? You’ll have to read the post to find out.
Brad McQuaid writes about Vanguard’s Size Problem. As in, the world is so big, vast, tremendous, huge, etc that unless you stick close to the cities, you will only rarely see another person. Though with all the methods of travel available, 90% of Telon is just there to keep the quest hubs separated. Brad says this vast expanse was a pushback against EverQuest’s omnipresent crowding that had people bumping into one another at every turn. But overcrowding is better than the alternative….
Brad says people will group if there’s enough people in the area with which to do the thing. Thallian insists the reason people don’t group (in WoW) is because it’s not FUN enough. He goes on to give a lot of suggestions about how to make dungeons and other encounters more fun, most of which were done eons ago in EverQuest.
SOE’s working on a new EverQuest, EverQuest Next. They could do far worse than to go back to basics and try to capture what made EQ special for its time. EQ has changed so much now that it’s a different game, but back then…. and as someone who last year started over from scratch, I can avow that EQ still has that same magic, if you’re doing it with a group of friends. EQ nostalgia must be going around, because Rao has got it as bad as I do. I don’t see either of us jumping back into the game, though.
Werit reports that you’ll be able to level up entirely via PvP in Cryptic’s upcoming Star Trek Online, which, I hope, will have a longer shelf life than Champions Online apparently had (I kid, I’m sure it’s doing amazingly). Well, according to XFire, Champions looks like it has already peaked. But I don’t trust those numbers. For one thing, we KNOW the Aion numbers are inflated because so many people are never logging off.
Melmoth and Zoso of Killed in a Smiling Accident have just gotten word that many other MMO companies are planning their own versions of WoW’s Cataclysm. My favorite: Darkfall’s UBACLASYM! It’s IMPACTED!
Openedge1 takes the pulse of a as-yet un-Cataclysmed Age of Conan to see if it will merely last the winter or if it has a long future ahead of it.
And lastly, F2P impresario Warhammermer writes about Ran Online, a “beat em up MMORPG set in a high school/secondary school“.
I don’t know why that reminds me of Pirate Baby’s Cabana, but it does.
Your weblog wins again! I had no idea about Ixobelle’s assault of Blizzard headquarters for a job. How inspiring. How interesting. I hope something comes of it somehow. I think I’ll be smiling about that all day long.
Yeah I looked into that story also, a very interesting read to say the least. I have a deep respect for players who are willing to take the time necessary to make quality user made material for games, though to be honest I doubt Blizzard will accept it… they’re a bit too prideful in that regard.
I don’t know if “prideful” is the right word. Try sending in a script to The Simpsons. I can assure you that no member of the team will ever see it because if they did and then they did anything remotely like any idea from that script, they would open themselves up to a “They stole my idea!” lawsuit.
The pain of being a company that has lots of money is that you then have to protect yourself from these sorts of things.
Of course, some wag will say that Blizzard has stolen all the ideas that make up WoW, but that is a different discussion altogether.
I have an unrealated question…
I tried to find a scroll and i didnt have one. How do i buy one in a level 54 area in Dragonica?
nvm i found it
Cool, because I’ve never been to the level 54 area 🙂
All of my old EQ friends seem to be feeling it too. I resubbed to EQ about a week ago under a huge wave of nostalgia… seems to happen every year.
I do it in part because I feel like I never really finished my business with EQ. I never once made it to level cap, though I got pretty close, and even got to do some higher end stuff. So, every year I go back for about 2-3 weeks, get a level or two on my old main, and call it good. It’s definitely not the same, but it still makes me smile. And frown a bit as I run through my favorite areas that are utterly devoid of people. It’s been so long and yet I’m still so attached to the game that I actually feel sad seeing those areas vacant and knowing that the MMOG world has moved on.
The game seemed so unforgiving in its early days. I didn’t hate that back then, though it was irritating at times. But looking back over my ‘career’ as an MMO gamer, it’s easy to see the point at which I went from being a pretty darn good player to being what I am now. I’ve become terribly soft and/or careless depending on the situation.
Ah well, it’s good to know there’s plenty of others out there still thinking of the old EQ days.
My best friend, the guy who convinced me to play EQ has just returned (after 5 years away). I’ve been having a blast showing him around and trying to explain what has changed. It’s been lots of fun and I even found something new, a spot of color in one of the dismal PoR zones!
I’m STILL angry at SOE for PoR. Nothing they could do with that expansion can make up for what they did to Freeport and the Desert of Ro.