MMO Blog Roundup - July 2009, Muckbeast, Spicytuna, and TishToshTesh
How Do I Get My Blog Included?
This is a semi-regular feature article in the Bright Hub MMO channel. If you run a blog or fan site that focusses on MMOs, and would like to join our program, send a message to Michael Hartman, the ME of the Bright Hub MMO channel. We will review your site for quality, activity, and applicability of content. If we accept you into the program, we will feature a teaser about your favorite blog post in our monthly roundup.
If you enjoy this article, make sure you read the May 2009 MMO Blog Roundup as well.
If You Want to Read More… Click the Titles
Just to avoid confusion, let me be clear. Each section is named for the blog itself. The next major title is the name of the article, and you can click it to read the full article. All you see here are snippets from the articles. You will want to check out the great blogs featured here for the full information.
Muckbeast - http://www.muckbeast.com
Boobs and Beefcake in Game Design
Are boobs or sex used too much in gaming? My personal thought is that no, they are not used to much. I actually think there is a shortage of well done, M rated content in games. I hate seeing games get censored in the US – particularly when the mature content is actually part of the storyline (as with The Witcher).
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Particularly in graphical games, it is perfectly reasonable for people to want their character to be attractive or even hot. Some people may even want to create a persona that drips with sex appeal. But why is this usually only an option for female avatars? Why can’t someone make a really buff, rippling, super manly, romance novel cover model looking guy?
Spicytuna
I recently re-activated one of my old account of an old MMO (gasp, I know!) I used to play. It was a game I was highly addicted to back in my college days that rhymes with “sminal smantasy smeleven”. Anyways, playing the game for a few hours, it got me wondering about Player Housing, and how it would work in the World of Warcraft.
TishToshTesh
Sendoku isn’t Vishnu, but as a newly minted Death Knight, subject of the Lich King, he is a harbinger of death, one who uses terror like a madman’s cudgel and fear like a torturer’s scalpel.
Early in his career, he was told that the hunger gnawing at his soul could only be sated by killing. His very first fight set the tone for his existence, as he was told to fight a fellow initiate to the death. The later massacre of scores of soldiers was only a mild escalation in his ultimate task to eradicate all life on Azeroth under the direction of the Lich King.
He is not quite alive, having been reanimated to serve in thrall to the Lich King, nor is he truly dead or undead. He and his brethren are at least somewhat mortal, as some have not survived the Lich King’s war efforts. So he’s understandably confused about his existence, and the suggestion to focus on obedience to the will of the Lich King and the tasks at hand undoubtedly help efforts to ignore exisistential musing.
Naissa’s Rage
I think they got lazy. I wish, how I wish, that even some competition would enter the market and just devour their player base by about 30% (the bad 30%, you know the type). We’d start to get some fantastic content, more 5 mans, and my #1 issue would be resolved: Patch frequency.
Why is it that Blizzard feels the need these days to release patches in “Major Content Patch of Awesomeness” (c) format these days? “LOOK AT HOW AMAZING THIS NEXT PATCH IS GOING TO BE! WE KNOW IT’S STILL LIKE 3 MONTHS AWAY BUT LOOK!” Why can’t we have them like the old days where there was a content, class, 5 man, or balance patch every so often and it just did some stuff? Why do my class changes have to be bundled with a raid? Why does my character model/skill have to be bugged for 6 months instead of getting fixed in a minor bug fix patch whilst raid boss encounters all require an immediate hotfix? Vanilla WoW had something like 13 patches if I recall. TBC got only a few, but the patches got bigger. Now the only thing we get are Major Content Patches of Awesomeness (c) where the patch notes are so long that it takes a full on hour or more to read them.
Convention Fans
The Ultimate Collectibles Show - A Pennsylvania Convention
If you’re looking for a convention to attend this October, The Ultimate Collectibles Show may be a great option. It is being held October 3rd and 4th at the Greater Philadelphia Expo Center.
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Some of the guests for this event include: Ed Gale (Chuckie from Child’s Play), Priscilla Barnes (The Devil’s Rejects), Deedee Bigelow (Horrorween), Warrington Gillette (Jason from Friday the 13th Part 2), Donna D’Ericho (Candyman), Roddy Piper (They Live), Kenneth Hall (Writer of The Puppetmaster), Erika Eleniak (Tales From The Crypt), Erin Moran (Galaxy of Terror/Happy Days), Candice Michelle (Horrorween), Ice-T (Law and Order: SVU), Amber Smith (1995 Playboy Playmate), and many more.
Wolfshead Online
EverQuest2: Stranger in a Strange Land
A few days ago I wrote an article describing what a new player might find in their first 15 minutes in EverQuest2. As far as EQ2, I have no axe to grind and no dog in the hunt. I have invested nothing in EQ2 except the cost of the expansion, a number of hours played and a few days of research and writing preparing my article. I’m not a typical EQ blogger in that I want my class fixed, some part of the game changed or concerned with social popularity. I’m just a sentimental MMO gamer who’s currently burned out from WoW and decided to rekindle my interest in a MMO I barely tried in the past.
Stylish Corpse
Various people have asked me to post what mods I use in EQ2 right now. I was interested to note that they’re more or less the same mods I used back in 2005 — the UI’s shortcomings are the same now as they were then, with a few exceptions — only in many cases the original mods have been taken over by newer players as the authors stop updating them, or are adaptations of existing good designs. EQ2 apparently includes a UI-moosher-arounder now, but I haven’t dared try it for myself yet, and I suspect I lack the programming skills to really do anything useful with it.
Mystic Worlds
Social Games - I get it and then again, I don’t.
I’ll preface this commentary by saying that I’m not the target audience for MetaPlace. The least of what I am as a gamer is social. Hell, I’m barely social in real life. Heavy social features and social tools don’t interest me much in my gaming. Yet, I checked out MetaPlace because Tipa at West Karana had posted about a Steampunk(SP) area that had been commented on by Cuppytalk. I ventured into the SP creation which was cute, hopped around various other zones whose descriptions interested me, played a mini game, didn’t see many players as I wandered along and logged out.
Play No Evil
Auditing Digital Sales - Growing Digital Distribution & Protecting Royalties
A group of UK developers has called for transparency in digital sales. This is a superb suggestion and would do a lot to help the industry. It would also allow developers to more accurately assess the merits of different digital distribution platforms… and, of course, more accurately audit their sales.
Play No Evil is new to our blog roundup list. Make sure you check out this blog. The author is a recognized expert in the field of computer security (among others).
Psychochild’s Blog
What the “RP” in “RPG” stands for
Of course, what’s really happening is another lament that role-playing just doesn’t happen in games called “RPGs”:An interesting thought, so let’s take a look at role-playing in games that use that term to describe themselves.Of course, this debate is nothing new. Back in the olden days of Usenet, I remember one person saying that computer “RPGs” should instead be called “KTATTS” games. In most of them you were merely going out and murdering things with the hopes of gaining power to able to fight meaner things.
