There’s been a fairly large what-to-do this week about some comments made by Ryan Barker, during a recent interview, about how supposedly there WILL be an MMO that will once and for all crush World of Warcraft, and it will be on Facebook!  Now, the thing is, first, this isn’t what Mr. Barker said at all.  But that’s how it was presented by the press.  And more than anything else, this is a stellar example of press proliferation of what is essentially a misquote, or at the least, misrepresentation.   But the only thing people are seeing over and over again is the tweet or the caption: Facebook MMO could crush World of Warcraft!   And it’s got a lot of people up in arms, because many of them, like myself, loathe Facebook games.  And love MMO’s.  So I thought I might try to offer up my take on what was said and what was meant, and maybe convince people to put down their pitchforks for just a moment. 

Read the rest of the entry »

So as you know by now, I tend to shy away from the overly covered topics in my blog and try to hit on those things that I think are perhaps overlooked, or underrated, or at least underdiscussed.  I could talk about Turbine’s making DDO free to play, which is certainly interesting, at the least.  Or Sony’s poor judgement in community manager’s these days.  Or the rampant rumor about Cryptic making an NWN MMO (which, btw, I don’t believe) .  But I’m actually more interested in discussing something else.  And that is the Book 8 content for new players that Turbine is releasing for Lord of the Rings Online.   Okay, so actually not so much the content itself, which you can read about in great detail here, but what it means. 

Read the rest of the entry »