Monthly Archives: September 2008

Game > Lore

I read a lot. As far as WoW goes, some of what I’m read­ing are excel­lent WoW blogs, but I also fol­low stan­dards like WoW Insider and mmo-champion (whose cov­er­age of Wrath has been amaz­ing). I enjoy it all, but not all of the enjoy­ment I get is inten­tional. Peo­ple who com­plain about lore in […]

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Ghostcrawler is WoW Game Design Porn

A few months ago, I wrote my guide to WoW PvE. At the time that I wrote that, Bliz­zard was tight-lipped in their design. With­out their express design goals posted any­where, every­thing had to be reverse-engineered from our expe­ri­ence in the game. In other words, my guide was a col­lec­tion of guesses. I hap­pen to […]

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Death to Retail

Mitch Hed­berg had an excel­lent bit where he talked about buy­ing a dough­nut. This is how it starts: “I bought a dough­nut and they gave me a receipt for the dough­nut… I don’t need a receipt for the dough­nut. I give you the money and you give me the dough­nut, end of trans­ac­tion.” He would […]

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Guild Strengthening via Personal Achievements

Recently, Kiki­das reminded me of a pop­u­lar thought in how to make guilds stronger: a guild house/stronghold of some kind, with var­i­ous cus­tomiz­able dec­o­ra­tions from tro­phies from kills and accom­plish­ments. The prob­lem with guild hous­ing is that the room is com­mu­nal prop­erty. A brand new guild mem­ber walks into a room that has every­thing populated […]

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Historicity and WoW

In his excel­lent book “Man in the High Cas­tle”, Philip K. Dick talks about items and his­toric­ity: She said, ‘what is “his­toric­ity”?’ ‘When a thing has his­tory in it. Lis­ten. One of those two Zippo lighters was in Franklin D. Roosevelt’s pocket when he was assas­si­nated. And one wasn’t. One has his­toric­ity, a hell of […]

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