Another year, another anniversary! It’s now been two years since I started Mana Obscura, intending to share my views on mages in World of Warcraft. Since then it’s been an adventure through several different MMOs, from Lord of the Rings Online through to the upcoming Guild Wars 2. There’s never been a dull moment! It’s…
Tag: nostalgia
The Best Raids: Past, Present Or Future?
Last week a subject cropped up in one of the article discussions: is Warcraft raiding getting steadily better all the time, or has it reached a peak and is in decline. Answering this by itself can go either way – more people than ever are able to experience tier 13 due to the predicted arrival…
SWTOR Space Combat: Missed Opportunity
As I’ve been playing the beta for Star Wars: The Old Republic, I’ve been trying to experience as much of the game as possible. A significant chunk of that is the Space Combat minigame. Basically this involves using the ship you earn at around level 15 to take part in space missions, such as escorting…
Reminiscing Isn’t What It Used To Be
Today’s article is a guest post from Bordy. Patch 4.3 in WoW will introduce the long-heralded art of Transmogrification; the ability (at a cost)to convert the look (but not the stats) of your current kit to match that of other kit that you own. Why though is this welcomed by so many? Is it because…
Smile Week: Gold-Plated Memories
It’s been a week since I started talking about the things I find great about MMOs. In that time I’ve looked at a whole bunch of stuff from how the games are built to how they’re supported. In the final post for the week, I wanted to talk a bit about one of the things…
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…
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…
PC Gaming Is Dead
Looking at the PC section of my local video games store is a depressing sight. The shelves that were once pride of place are now consigned to the back, flanked by preowned console games. The content of these shelves isn’t much better – it’s full of “safe” titles. Sequels, sure-fire hits and money spinners. When…
An Appreciation of Developers
Earlier this week I stumbled on a brilliant idea from Scarybooster. For a couple of years now he’s been running Developer Appreciation Week, a chance for us to say thanks to all those in the video games industry who make our lives that little bit better. I know I’ve been a grouchy malcontent recently, poking…
What Cataclysm Means to World PVP
This guest post is from Bordy, a longtime friend who doesn’t have a blog of his own and so decided to use mine. You can find him on Twitter @snuffleorc. Who among us Vanilla Veterans does not look fondly back to the mass battles between Southshore and Tarren Mill? Cataclysm wasn’t what ended these, but…