I haven’t blogged in so long I’d pretty much all but forgotten how.  But this morning I’m required to back up my perforce database, and as such find myself with a fairly copious amount time on my hands in which I’m forbidden to touch source code in any way.  And fortunately enough for me, Jack Emmert and the good folks over at Cryptic were kind enough to drop a nice bit of news that is totally blogworthy.  It appears they’re they’re building an online title in the beloved Forgotten Realms universe.  So why is the reaction so universally negative!?  Read on to be subjected to my thoughts on Cryptic’s “Not Really an MMO”.

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So I gotta say even I was fairly surprised at this announcement.  And of course both the twittersphere and the blogsphere have exploded over the news.  Some of my favorite bloggers have expressed their concerns, and a few as well whom are long time LOTRO subscribers whom don’t think it’s a problem at all.  So what’s my take?

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Last night, I had the privilege of playing Guild Wars with the group put together by the Massively folks.  This was our third outing, and we had an absolute blast.  We began by forming into little two man groups and setting out to hunt Charr.  I have created a Mesmer for our get-togethers, thinking that Mesmer’s are not a popular choice, and perhaps might be filling a needed role.  Of course, apparently half the group thought similarly, and everywhere I looked I saw Mesmer’s.  Our group was in fact, two mesmers, and well, two mesmers fighting against Charr two levels above us – a lot of death was involved, and only a little of it was on behalf of the monsters. 

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So you may have noticed somewhat of a turmoil over the blog sphere this past week on Blizzard’s latest virtual good offer – the Celestial Steed.  I don’t really have an opinion one way or the other about the horse (well I do, but that’s not the point), but it’s been fascinating reading some of the responses, and a few I must credit for spawning some insight of my own.  And it’s that insight I wish to talk about this morning (when I should be coding).

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Social Media games have introduced an entirely new solution to an age-old social gaming problem, and it’s as insidious as it is genius.  It’s also only a matter of time before you see it in your favorite MMO.  Read on after the break to hear what I’m talking about.

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I started this post off, thinking I would write a (typically) long winded diatribe on the recent blog fury that I’ve been reading in the wake of this year’s GDC.  So I started going over the different articles (yes I’m so old fashioned I still refer to blogs & news posts as “articles”) in this post, and I spent a much longer time re-reading over all of them than I certainly should have, by any right. 

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I’ve been playing quite a bit Star Trek Online lately.  Well, I say quite a bit – I think I’ve logged maybe 10 to 12 total hours in the game of actual playtime, so I guess it’s not all that much.  But this post isn’t so much about Star Trek Online the game, which might be fun, as it is about what the game serves as only the latest example of – and that is Cryptic’s absolutely terrible new player experience.  Now when you use words like “absolutely terrible”, obviously you’re going a long ways down subjective road, and everyone has their own chocolate and vanilla.  But for me (and it’s my blog), each game Cryptic makes seems to only make the starting experience worse, until the point has come when I’ve got to say my piece.  Read on if you’d like to hear it..

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So if you ever do any blogging, the end of the year always presents an interesting challenge.  That challenge is.. do I do a “year in review” post, or a “predictions for the upcoming year” post.  If you’re especially prolific, which I’m not, you do both.  The “year in review” posts can be fun because it’s always interesting to look back, see what was launched, which trends took hold that we didn’t expect, and to see how things panned out.  But they also require work, as you actually have to spend time going back through articles, checking dates, cross-referencing performance numbers against your claims (it’s all well and good to say that Champions Online tanked, but did it really?  I’d have to check my numbers.  Honestly I don’t think it did.  It just felt like it did), and in general do research.  Prediction posts, on the other hand, are much easier, We get to simply talk out of our butts about whatever we think is going to happen, and there’s almost no work involved at all, save putting our prophetic statements to paper.  Lazy blogger that I am.. you can guess which kind of post this is. 

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Hopefully you recognize the tongue-in-cheek nature of the title, but if you don’t, don’t despair, it’s still early and it’s still Monday.  But this was something that occurred to me over the weekend, and I stewed over it enough that I finally decided on Monday I’d have to put up at least a bit of a post. 

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So this post really fall alongs the lines of stream of consciousness thinking.  Which means that in as little as a few months from now I’m likely to look back at this and say “um WHAT were you thinking..”  But be that as it may, I spend a lot of time playing and thinking about MMO’s, and I’ve noticed a bit of a trend lately, and I thought it worth talking about.

 
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