by Wolfshead on January 17, 2012
I try to avoid delving into the realm of politics here at WolfheadOnline but there is a very important issue that affects almost everyone here in America and in the world. The freedom of the Internet has come under attack by big corporations that have managed to influence American politicians under the guise of “stopping piracy”.
If we don’t stop this bill the U.S. Government will start blocking offending sites using the same draconian techniques used by totalitarian regimes and human rights violators such as China, Iran and Syria.
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by Wolfshead on December 6, 2011
I know there are some of my readers involved in various forms of indie video game development. I wanted to share with them an amazing bundle of indie dev items that is currently being offered by 3D Ocean which is a part of the Envato family of websites.
For $20 you can get $500 worth of art assets! Knowing how tough it is for indie developers to get assets in their games I figured I’d give 3D Ocean some free publicity.
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by Wolfshead on December 3, 2011
It’s been a while since I posted anything on my website. I feel that I owe my loyal readers an explanation of why I haven’t been posting as much.
I have been blogging and championing the cause of virtual worlds and MMORPG’s since 2004. I’m not a big fan of the word “blogging” and its fellow partner in crime “blogger”. You might consider me a snob for saying this, but I would prefer to consider myself a writer and an essayist.
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by Wolfshead on October 23, 2011
If you could ask God one question what would it be? Would you ask a deep question such as what is the meaning of life or would you waste your question on something trivial like how to remove bubble gum from a sole of a running shoe?
If you happen to be a disciple of World of Warcraft and can make the pilgrimage to BlizzCon, you actually can ask the virtual gods of Azeroth a question. This was the case at BlizzCon 2011 held this past weekend in Anaheim where thousands of true believers assembled before the thrones of the gods of Azeroth. In fact one player actually praised Greg Street Lead WoW Designer and outright called him “a god”.
What did I think of BlizzCon 2011 and the Mists of Pandaria preview and what does this mean for WoW?
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by Wolfshead on August 31, 2011
The past paradoxically becomes clearer as time passes. Trends are very hard to pinpoint and define while they are incubating and growing. When you are personally experiencing a cultural movement you don’t have the time or inclination to understand the implications of what you are doing. You are there and it feels right.
We humans love to jump on bandwagons. We are prone to getting caught up in the moment. We see this with political candidates, the latest technology and we see this with video games and MMOs. During those periods of reckless abandon rarely do we ever stop to consider the implications of our actions. We live for the moment.
I believe enough time has passed since 1998 that it’s time to take stock of what MMOs have become and how their design has affected what we have become as players. There’s a saying “You are what you eat”. I believe this is also true of MMOs, you are what you play. What you do and where you travel has a profound effect on who you become. This explains why most of us who came to fantasy worlds to answer the call of adventure ended up being actors.
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by Wolfshead on July 20, 2011
For a long time I have been concerned about how the focus of MMOs has changed from the community as a whole to the individual player. Practically every MMO quest these days focuses on the player as being the savior of the world.
Much of this change is due to what is going in single player video game design. MMO designers have been brought up in a video game culture where players are treated like heroes just for showing up. Load up any popular single player video game and it becomes readily apparent that players are no longer just players; instead they have been elevated to heroes.
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by Wolfshead on June 19, 2011
Those of us poor souls who are MMO and virtual world veterans have seen a lot in the past 12 years of the history of this genre. We are no strangers to the philosophical tug of war between world and game. As early MMO travelers and pilgrims, we used to passionately write about it and fiercely debate it. But then we stopped discussing it altogether.
Somewhere in the mid 2000′s, in the public consciousness MMOs crossed the Rubicon and became more game than world. The world became the servant of the game — not the other way around. At about that time an important tipping point was reached that came about unannounced and unheralded: the collective dream of being part of a living, breathing albeit virtual world died.
How did this happen and why?
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by Wolfshead on May 18, 2011
In January of 2011, I made the bold and outrageous claim that Blizzard’s Cataclysm was the worst MMO expansion in history. From the vantage point of a player experiencing the pre-level cap game, I was unimpressed at what Blizzard had done to WoW; I felt they had watered down and trivialized their own MMO which was from the outset already too easy and simplistic. I viewed Cataclysm as the inevitable culmination of years of expedient game design that pandered to the lowest common denominator of players. For my efforts, I was demonized by some and applauded by others.
Last week during a shareholders conference call, Mike Morhaime revealed that WoW has lost 600,000 subscribers since Cataclysm’s release. At roughly $15 per subscriber that’s a loss of $9 million dollars per month in revenues. Given this bleak news, I feel somewhat vindicated. I was one of the few if only MMO commentators to have the courage to take on the 800 pound WoW gorilla loved by 12 million fans and tell it like it is.
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by Wolfshead on May 12, 2011
I used to think there was something grand and noble about the idea of a quest, that is until MMORPG developers got their slimy hands on them. Quests have become so pedestrian and cliched that they no longer have any real meaning within a MMORPG context.
Many years ago I naively convinced myself that MMOs needed more quests. At the time I believed that they were a possible solution to solving the problem of what MMOs had become: an ever increasingly complex raiding game. Well, now that I’ve seen what quests have done to MMOs I freely admit I was wrong about quests.
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by Wolfshead on April 22, 2011
There is no doubt that many years ago when I first started to be seduced by the charms of EverQuest — the first fully realized 3D virtual world — I was overcome with a feeling of euphoria. Being transported with friends from all over the world to a strange magical land of fantasy and adventure was unlike anything I had ever experienced.
After the eventual decline of EverQuest I found myself continually searching for a replacement virtual world. Although World of Warcraft created a superbly detailed and immersive experience there was something always missing. Many years later and many MMOs later I still feel that no other MMO has ever been able to successfully recreate all of those feelings that EverQuest produced.
So here I am, 11 years after the release of EverQuest still chasing that virtual dragon.
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