Month: May 2008

Wrath of the L

I'm working on a couple of pieces based on the WotLK news updates. Before that flurry of announcements, I was working on boring posts like "Master Looter is the only option", "Pace isn't that hard" and other pieces that sound even worse. Blah blah. I got bored while writing them.

I write everything concurrently, so when I do update it will be with a series of posts. This is how I wrote fiction, too.

Part of writing about the expansion is typing out the name of said expansion. I mistype WotLK every time. What should be:

Wrath of the Lich King

comes out:

Wrath of the Licking

(Insert massively multiplayer punchline here.)

Happy Mother's Day

Being a brand new dad has attuned me to Mother's Day. I used to obey when my father told me to get my mother a gift, but that's because there was the threat of physical violence if I didn't. That turned into a habit, but I never really got it. Ah, parenting.

If you already understand Mother's Day before becoming a parent yourself, then I raise a toast to you. If you don't understand it or simply go through the motions like I did, all I can say is that you'll get it as soon as you have kids. I've already called my mother to apologize for not understanding it sooner. She laughed at me.

So Happy Mother's Day everyone, especially to gamer moms and writer moms.

(Yes, this is a day late. I thought it defeated the purpose if I took part of her Mother's Day to write a post on my blog about Mother's Day. So my new-mom wife got the whole day. Part of that day was giving her a crafted [Belt of Deep Shadow]. You might chuckle, but she loved it, and it was a large upgrade over her Netherstorm blue questing belt. And yes, there was a real-life gift as well.)

Feedburner is live

A friend told me that Feedburner is a better way to go for managing feeds. Now there's a new subscribe button in the Meta section, I recommend that you use it. I also turned on email notification for you the rss averse.

WotLK news bomb

WowInsider and Mmo-champion are drowning us with links the first huge wave of WotLK news. Most of it is awesome, while some of it is outstanding.

So now at least I have a large number of topics that I want to write about. My very boring, unfinished "Master Looter for the win" article can blissfully go back to the drafts.

The Downside of Endgame Guilds

I've been reading Tobold and Potshot lately. They're talking about loot and game design as it relates to endgame guilds, specifically guild hopping and progression problems due to it. I haven't seen a decent explanation of the problem, but as a guild officer/leader I've seen it in action twice now, once with the original WoW endgame and now with the TBC endgame. I don't have a solution, but I can frame the problem.

For me, the most fun time in WoW is right after an expansion hits, when there's limited collective endgame exploration. All the content is new and fresh, then I find myself grouping with not just my long-term guild friends, but also my friends who left to get on the progression roller coaster. It's glorious! This is what the first two months of TBC was like.

Then, endgame progress starts to happen, and a tiered system begins to form.

Continue reading The Downside of Endgame Guilds