The Dark Age of the Super Hero Slacker MMO Player
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 …
Tag: Wrath of the Lich King
Reflections on Blizzard Losing 600,000 WoW Subscribers
In January of 2011, I made the somewhat the bold and outrageous claim that Blizzard's Cataclysm was the worst MMO expansion in history. From the vantage point of a player …
WoW’s Growing Immersion Deficit
The success of a virtual world is dependent on the ability of the developers to convincingly immerse the player in their world. Without a daily emphasis and reverence for mechanics, …
Blizzard’s Addiction to Previewing the Future
What if J.R.R. Tolkien had named his classic fantasy trilogy How Frodo Destroyed the One Ring at Mount Doom? Thankfully he had the good sense and propriety not to do …
A Tale of Two Playstyles and Why They Still Need Each Other
Before I started playing MMOs I was a bit of loner. I was always shy. I was the big clumsy kid that always got picked last for teams in school. …
Is Alexa Charting the Decline of WoW?
Is there an accurate way to know if a MMO is in decline? For most players it's something we can sense by intuition. We make mental notes of our anecdotal …
Challenging the Sacred Cash Cow of Quest Based MMOs
It's been a good 5 years since the release of World of Warcraft -- the first MMO to focus on entirely on quests as the prime vehicle for it's gameplay …
Fix for Nvidia and Vista Problems in WoW
or the past few months since the release of the Wrath of the Lich King I have been experience terrible instability problems when I play World of Warcraft. I'm currently …
WoW Patch Notes We Might See in the Future
There is one undeniable fact about World of Warcraft: as the MMO ages it's becoming less challenging. For lack of a better word WoW is being dumbed-down as Blizzard feels …
Predicting the Second WoW Hero Class
By a simple process of deduction I'm going to attempt to predict the identity of the second WoW hero class. I have no special or inside knowledge but I will …
How to Clean Up Your WoW Server One Idiot at a Time
Admittedly, I'm still playing WoW. After quitting last year, like many people I decided to come back to experience the new expansion content of Wrath of the Lich King. To …
The Problem with the WoW Achievement System
I absolutely loathe the WoW achievement system. There I said it. Both in it's design and implementation Blizzard has created an obnoxious cuckoo clock that pops out every so often …
Bartle Questions Virtual Torture and the Lack of Choice in WoW’s Quests
Virtual world evangelist Richard Bartle has made the news yet again in the MMO blogosphere. Richard Bartle the grandfather of virtual worlds, recently posted a blog article about some concerns …
WoW: Is Blizzard Promoting Virtual Torture and Murder with the Deathknight Hero Class?
Today I read a very interesting thread on the official Blizzard forums about details about the quests for WoW's first hero class: the Deathknight. Orophino points out that in order …
WoW: Is Rolling the Dice a Good Way to Select Beta Testers?
Lately I've started wondering about the validity of the selection process for the beta test of Blizzard's Wrath of the Lich King. In the Burning Crusade Blizzard admitted that players …
WoW: Heroism For Sale
The bizzare way that Blizzard seems to be giving everything away lately is a real cause for concern. It's like they are dismantling WoW one feature at a time in …
WoW: Could Deathtards Be the Worst MMO Blunder of All Time?
Those that have read my previous article about hero classes in WoW will not be surprised that I'm appalled at this ill-conceived decision. Frankly, in it's current incarnation hero classes …
WoW: The Problem with Hero Classes
As the release of Blizzard’s World of Warcraft new expansion Wrath of the Lich King looms ever nearer, I’m starting to feel unease at the prospect of a hero class emerging from …