I’ve been spending a lot of time thinking about how I was going to kick off Smile Week. About which ideas I’d pull together and what stories I’d share. Unfortunately I’d spent a lot of time thinking and not very much writing, which isn’t very helpful. As I sat on the train between Manchester and…
Category: MMO Musings
Engineer Gazimoff’s Smile Week
Or: How I Learned To Stop Worrying and Love the Game I’m going to start off with a screenshot. I can’t remember when exactly it was taken, but it was early on in my Warcraft gaming career when the raidgroup I was in was clearing through Blackwing Lair. That puts it at late 2005 or…
In Defence of the Trifecta
In almost every MMO that I’ve played there have been three classic roles to choose from. A tank is the one who soaks the damage for a party, a healer keeps the party standing and the DPS are there to deal damage. I like dealing damage. I don’t know if I have a thing for…
Free to Play: MMO Retirement?
Like many people, I recently heard that Star Trek Online was moving to a free-to-play model. In all honesty I’m not surprised, and like Spinks I think it should have used that model from the outset. Reaction to the news also seems to be positive. Some say that it means that they’ll give the game…
The MMO Blueprint
The recent game conventions have shown us that there’s a collection of top-tier MMOs heading our way over the next two years. It’s a great time to be a fan of the genre as there are some really interesting concepts emerging, both in the game worlds we’ve seen and the mechanics that have been revealed….
Google Cannot Make Good MMOs
I’ve been mulling over a question for a few days about how we choose which MMOs to play. What draws us to one game world over another, how some attributes are more important to each of us than others. I’m going to be writing more about it towards the end of the week, but I…
The Flaming Kitty Copter
Crafting is one of those things I love about MMOs. Being able to gather stuff in the game world and make items from them always makes me smile. It doesn’t even matter if they’re useful or not as long as they do something – anything. The only thing that gnaws at me is that crafting…
Fear of the Fansites
Back in May 2010 the Warcraft blogging community were asked if they’d consider writing for the World of Warcraft Official Magazine. I have to be honest with you: I considered it, asked a few questions but ultimately didn’t go through with it. I was a new blogger on the scene (still am by most accounts),…
The Lure of the Franchise
I was recently chatting to a friend about how we felt about Warcraft these days. We were both a little jaded and going through the same cycle of log in, raid, log out. I can just imagine a line of heroes forming outside the entrance to Firelands, punching the machine as they clock in for…
Is It Fun?
I was recently reminded about something that happened during a recent-ish beta. I’ll spare the blushes of the game involved by not mentioning names, but I’ll share this little episode. There was a bit of a conversation on the beta forums that went a little bit like this: one group of people didn’t like the…