WoW Celebrities

I’ve decided something… I really don’t like the word “celebrities”. Not conceptually, mind you, but the actual letter structure of the word – it’s just weird. Anyway, I wanted to talk a little about the celebs of the WoW community. Individual servers often have their famous or infamous types. The servers I’ve been on have the people that are known because of their progression, the high-end raiders, but that’s usually the guild tag. Those who are really known are the trolls. We had player who went by Skillasaurus(spelling may be off). He always talked in all caps like he was a barbarian and said ridiculous statements, such as, “SKILLASAURUS NO AFRAD OF STOOPID GM. SKILLASAURUS ONE SHOT GM.” It was actually somewhat entertaining how he never broke character or said anything that was actually inappropriate, but still got trade chat in a fuss everytime with people legitimately trying to argue with him. He even got people to create similar named copycat characters to bathe in the spotlight. There are those, however, that exceed local server fame and are followed by thousands if not millions. Who? How? Why? (more…)

Needing Topics

question-mark-nothing

People who know me well might be surprised by this, but sometimes I just run out of things to say. I want to get back into filling this blog with ideas and events, but what?  We’re late into an expansion with the new one not even yet seen on the horizon. There’s just nothing new to report on. I even tried to venture to Blog Azeroth in hopes of partaking in their “Shared Topic” posts and found none currently up. I’m not sure if I caught it in an off time, the holidays and what not, or if their not doing that anymore. If anyone knows and reads this post, please let me know – it was a very cool site and idea center.

Recently I’ve been doing some live streaming and video making and that’s been pretty fun, (more…)

Daily Thoughts: MMO Death & Consequences

I’ve always found there to be something wrong with a lack of consequences for any given action. In the real world there are plenty of repercussions for bad decisions and failure. If you gamble and lose, you lose money and possibly go into debt or face other personal problems. You wouldn’t likely run in the middle of a gang shootout or busy intersection without good cause. In traditional video games, dying usually means reverting to the last saved location, but in multiplayer online games, there are varying and often insignificant consequences. Game developers have a tough job of balancing the feeling of risk with keeping the game fun.

There was a poker application on myspace that I played for a little while. There was “chips” that you could bet and collect but had no real dollar value attached. Most players played in a similar fashion to how a realistic game would go. You don’t bet big unless you have a good hand or really think you can bluff your way through. Ocassionally though, a player would join a table that would simply max bet every hand. Complete disregard for the normal consequences of betting all your money. Unless they were challenged and lost quickly, it would pretty much ruin any table. Other players would fold, leave, or sometimes call the bet and be taken out completely in one fell swoop. Of course, there is a chance someone feels ballsy and goes all-in, but not every hand or that commonly. The realism and fun of the game was hurt because losing the chips meant nothing, a player could log back in or re-install the app and be good to go yet again. In other types of multiplayer games, specifically WoW, the lack of penalties for dying or losing sometimes can hinder the behavior and strategy of some of the players. (more…)

Daily Thoughts : The Importance of the Right Guild

My guild is a very friendly, casual guild with a longer history and has had great success in previous tiers of raiding. We got hit hard by the end of expansion blues. Several of our more active players and officers took extended breaks, a few players quit wow, others had some real life issues take them out of raiding for a span. Several months ago, raiding almost completely stopped. We went from a 25 man guild progressing dutifully through ICC to not having the online members to fill a 10m ICC. At this point, we had downed 8/12 bosses in Icecrown in 25m and I believe our 10m group was 11/12. We were often tied or close for 3rd horde progression on our server. Admittedly, not a power-house server, but we were making progress. Even as we were doing fine, set to continue, the series of personal burn-outs and real life priorities reduced us to 1 of 6 active officers.

(more…)