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I Really Need Some Kind of Name for Random Friday Posts
By Cameron Sorden | January 4, 2008
Every Friday, and only on Fridays for some reason, it seems like there’s nothing major I want to talk about, but there’s always two or three smaller stories I want to highlight because they were interesting. What the heck is up with that? I need some kind of recurring post title for small groups of highlights that aren’t worth a small post, but are worth a line or two of commentary. I came up with Random Bytes, but I want to save that in case I ever decide to do a podcast. Meh. I’ll think of something. Anyway, here are a few things I wanted to mention:
DrainingSouls.net has a post up which caught my attention: long story short, a temporary guild leader disbanded after looting the guild bank, sold all the items to random people on the server, and then joined up with a new guild who didn’t care that he was a thieving bastard– they just needed well-geared players for progression. I thought this was interesting not because it’s a particularly unique occurrence, but because this kind of story has become a lot more common in the last few years (and especially with Warcraft). Have we really gotten to the point where community just isn’t as important as the game? What’s the point in having social games where the community is irrelevant? If no one cares enough to blacklist people for pulling dick moves like that, what’s to stop people from doing it all the time? It’s a sad, sorry World of Warcraft we live in.
Next, I found an article this morning about The Elder Scrolls at TVG. There’s nothing particularly remarkable about the article itself until you get to the last line, where Pete Hines delivers the following quote:
“I think there is a huge difference between what a single-player game can offer and what an MMO can offer,” adds Hines, “they are very different types of games and experiences. As you can see with Oblivion and the upcoming Fallout 3, the folks making those games are still very interested in expanding what can be done in a single-player game.”
That sounds, to me at least, like ZeniMax is working on a completely new intellectual property, or at least something that isn’t The Elder Scrolls or Fallout. I sincerely hope that that’s the case, since I firmly believe that an Elder Scrolls MMOG would be a horrible disaster and ruin everything I like about the franchise. If they want to make a multi-player Elder Scrolls where you can play through the static world and story with a few friends, I am totally on board. But an MMOG? No. Thank. You.
Last, I wanted to mention that I really like flourishing my weapons in games. Like, a lot. You wouldn’t think it makes a difference, but pressing a key or a button to whip out your weapons and put them away again adds a lot to a game experience for me. You probably think I’m talking about WoW’s “z” key, and I am, but I’m also remembering that in KOTOR you could tap the “Y” button to do a cool spinny move with your lightsabers as you were running around that had absolutely no purpose other than to look cool. Like jumping, it’s something you can give your players to idly tap while they run around and give themselves some momentary entertainment. Designers, take note. It’s a little, easy, fun thing to implement– and it makes me happy as a player.
That’s all for today.
Topics: Random |
January 4th, 2008 at 6:31 pm
Random Blatherings? Ha!
I dunno, mate… maybe it’s become routine enough that we, your loyal readers, don’t notice anymore. Or perhaps we just expect it on Fridays? 
January 5th, 2008 at 11:04 am
Oh wait, I’ve got it: Random Babble!