PlayOn — interesting WoW statistics, including commentary, by the Palo Alto Research Center. Of course, you know most of this already if you’ve played WoW to level 60, but will confirm your suspicions about the priest stranglehold on the endgame. (that’s hyperbole, folks!)
Over on plaguelands, Krones wrote an ode to one of the original EverQuest dudes, Kendrick, including a list of the design projects he supervised. I was vaguely aware of Kendrick when he was with the VI/SOE Collective, not in the way that Krones knows everyone’s resume, but more as a disgruntled player that took four-plus years to escape from the hamster wheel.
I certainly remember when the mass exodus was announced and a good portion of the old skool VI left for greener pastures. Initial reaction … have a nice life. Later reaction … damn, maybe they were the ones holding this thing together. The game certainly changed under SOE’s sole reign, whether that was inevitable as the game matured or was due to management, I wouldn’t know.
I always hazarded a guess, of course. It was because SOE was evil, the very nexus of evil.
I run hot and cold on this Guild Wars game. Some days I’m like a schoolgirl … I LOVE this game lol, it’s everything I thought an online world could be! lol! Other days, the game can suck me off two times.
So if someone were to ask me if it’s a go, I’d have to ask, which way is the wind blowing?
Is that good? Is that an improvement in gaming? Hell if I know. It is different, I can tell you that.
Examples of different:
1. The Community. I spent the larger part of the race to level 20 (max) with the general chat turned off. It’s a noisy din like I’ve never heard before, and I’m including the East Commons tunnel (pre-Bazaar days in EverQuest) and Ironforge (World of Warcraft) on a Sunday afternoon in that assessment. It’s migraine-inducing chatter.
The problem in living without general chat is, as far as I’ve witnessed, there is no community. In GW, whack out a few quests and you’ve moved on to the next town, and, the idiots you ran into before are long gone … either left in the dust or they popped up in another clone of the Next Town.
That part is good, but I should be more vigilant with adding the good players, the reliable dudes, to my friends list … because there are quests/missions where a real live person is vastly superior to a hired NPC — even a not-terribly-attentive real live person.
There comes a point where the hired NPCs have a death wish and they’re taking the entire group with them.