I’ll start with a disclaimer: although we’ve never met in person, I’ve known Leithart since 2012 when we were both fans of the then-upcoming MMO WildStar. Since those early days, he went into game development (coincidentally for the studio behind that same game), and I moved into game journalism. We still ping each other tweets from…
Tag: playerbase
Becoming The Nomad
My approach to MMOs is changing. I used to be someone who sticks to a game for several years, but now I consider changing every six months. It’s something I first felt back in August last year, and explored further when I thought there might be a limit on the number of subscription MMOs that…
The Unknown Warcraft Subscriber
There’s been a flurry of commentary recently on the recent earnings call by Activision Blizzard, where they provide some highlights on their third quarter performance. If you’re interested in reading through the entire transcript of the call you can find it at Seeking Alpha. There are a couple of quick facts to pull out: Warcraft…
The Kitten Standard Economy?
A while back I wrote about the possibility that Titan, Blizzard’s next MMO, would feature a real money auction house. This followed on from Diablo 3, which introduced the concept in order to provide a safer alternative to the grey market that emerged around item trading in Diablo 2. The main argument at the time…
If Not You, Who Else?
I’m beginning to feel like there’s a crunch brewing. It’s almost like the shocks that happen before the earthquake, where you know something is going to happen but you can’t quite put your finger on what. It started off with the comments I’d spot on Twitter from players saying they were hanging up their Warcraft…
Tired of MMOs?
There’s been a discussion kicking around Twitter for the past week or so, which seemed to end up with a single question. I think it was probably best said by Wolfshead: “is there anything left to say about today’s MMOs that hasn’t already been said?” If we’re talking about the current crop of MMORPG games…
My Folly Against The Entitlesloth
I feel like a conflict has been brewing inside of me for the past few days. It’s one of those horrible conflicts of ideologies that I can’t see any easy way to resolve. And what makes it worse is that both sides of the conflict are borne of a single source. You see, I want…
5 Ways to Help The Warcraft Community
I was flicking through the list of recent blue posts when I came across this little gem on the EU forums. Turns out that there’s a lot of thread deletion going on, particularly when a topic gets derailed or descends into anarchy. I can’t say for certain if much useful content is being lost as…
Casual Is Not A Dirty Word
Back when I was a kid, being called a geek was a crude insult thrown around by those unwilling to accept that people didn’t share their interests and hobbies. Nowadays it’s worn as a badge of honour. I’m not saying that you’ll see me standing on the top of a mountain with my shirt torn…
Where Videogames Go To Die
Back when I was a kid, one of the first videogames I remember playing was Horace Goes Skiing. I was about three years old, playing this basic Frogger clone on a computer with a dead-flesh keyboard. It was great, even though it was frustrating trying to steer this character down a virtual slalom course. There…