More treadmill discussion

There were a couple comments in this post (When the Treadmill Moves With You) that I wanted to break out into another blog post, instead of it getting buried in the comments.
Werit said “Eve, UO and SWG all have grinds but they are just disguised.” I happen to agree with that. I didn’t play UO, [...]

When the treadmill moves with you…

I just saw a glimpse of a possible MMOG future, and it concerns me a bit.
Preface: My old DAoC guild, the people who helped shape my best MMO experience ever, have fairly mixed feelings about WAR. They’ve been in the beta for far longer than me (good to have friends in high places), and none [...]

Vacation withdrawal

I’m on day two of my vacation, sitting in the hotel at dinnertime after seeing Niagara Falls today. I’m all about being outside, natural beauty, family time, etc., but as I’m enjoying a beer while the kids clean up after swimming, I’m totally jonesing for WAR or TF2.
I’m not pathetic. I wasn’t thinking about dwarven [...]

Vacation – shutting down for a few days

I’m headed out of town for the next 5 days, Sunday to Thursday, so things will be quiet here. Play nice, everyone
I’m going to have game withdrawal. I’m not bringing my laptop (going cold turkey!), and I’m going to miss…Team Fortress 2! Bet you thought I was going to say the WAR beta, [...]

So, you want to be a blogger?

I was listening to VirginWorlds on my way to work this morning, episode #119, I think (I’m behind, my phone broke a couple weeks ago, and I just got my replacement), and Brent read a question from a listener who was asking about how to become a game blogger.
I started this blog about a year [...]

Massive AoC battle lag: I had a bad feeling about this

I just read Massively’s story about big battles in AoC having performance issues.
The main issues are identified as those of client performance, and those of content and collision. Client performance is apparently the biggest problem being reported…
Some of the ways in which Funcom hopes to improve the performance in these battles is to tone down [...]

Building a Warhammer server community

While I was writing my last post about the possibilities of unbalanced Warhammer servers (whether the imbalance is population numbers or skill levels), I started thinking about the year that Hibernia was getting a whooping on the Percival server back in DAoC. The three-realm system gave us the opportunity to nip at the heels of [...]

Missing my three factions

I was reading Keen’s opinion of the Warhammer Alliance poll showing a factional slant toward Destruction, and it made me think about DAoC and the three-realm system. When WoW announced they would only have two factions, I thought it was a bad idea. Coming from DAoC, I really thought the three-realm system was a great [...]

Can’t get much more random than this

So, I’m “working on a paper” this afternoon, listening to iTunes and writing/researching stuff, and Guitar Wolf’s “Fujiyama Attack” comes on. I love Guitar Wolf. So, instead of staving off distraction by diving back into my research on ADHD (irony much?), I go searching Youtube for Guitar Wolf videos. Their songs are like 2 minutes [...]

WAR: “they’ve actually thought this crap through a bit. :D”

The quote is from Michael Zenke, making a comment over on Tobold’s blog about WAR’s Public Quests.
Without breaking the NDA (maybe stretching it a bit, bending like the willow, not breaking like the oak), I have to agree with Michael. There are some thoughtful posts in the comments about the structure of the public quests, [...]

Massively covers WAR Public Quests

Since I’m not allowed to say a lot about the Warhammer Beta, I can at least point you to articles about WAR and obliquely reference something I may be enjoying. Michael Zenke over at Massively does a good job of explaining Public Quests and describing why they’re a good addition to the usual Kill Ten [...]

Lost an entire evening

Civilization is my classic “Wtf?, why are the birds singing? Wait, why is it getting light outside??” game. For a good 14 years now, I’ve lost a couple nights a year to Civilization. Work is brutal the next day, I have to pretend that I’m alert and paying attention to my boss, my wife, my [...]