Archive for March, 2008
« Previous EntriesPulling Off the Bandaid of Virtual Value
Monday, March 31st, 2008As usual, a comment at another blog has blown into a full-fledged blog post. Eric at Elder Game referenced a post that Tobold wrote where he discussed some of the problems surrounding player possession of game items and characters, and the reasons why the game companies are very interested in keeping this issue away from […]
IMGDC 2.0 Wrap-Up
Sunday, March 30th, 2008The two-day IMGDC 2.0 conference just came to an end a few hours ago. It always amazes me just how draining these conferences are– I’m utterly exhausted, both physically and mentally, by the end of each day. Every time I’m at one I’m reminded how genuinely impressed I am with those of you who attend […]
Happy Birthday, Random Battle!
Friday, March 28th, 2008Today marks the one-year anniversary of my blog, Random Battle. One year ago today, I decided to start this up when I realized that the comments I was leaving on other writer’s blogs were getting long enough to be posts themselves (You can see the first post here). I figured that if I had so […]
Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures
Thursday, March 27th, 2008I have to admit that up until a few weeks ago, I had almost no knowledge of Age of Conan. I was aware that there was a game coming out with that name, but I’m a busy guy and I’ve never been particularly interested in the character of Conan– he was just some trite fantasy […]
Why Respect the Re-Spec Costs?
Thursday, March 27th, 2008Tobold wrote a post today (actually he wrote like four– that guy is a writing machine!) about the lack of healers and tanks in World of Warcraft. This isn’t a perceived lack of tanks and healers, either. You can confirm it for yourself by logging into any server and watching the LFG channel. It’s much […]
Storming Magister’s Terrace
Tuesday, March 25th, 2008I just spent the better part of my afternoon and evening exploring the new content in World of Warcraft’s patch 2.4, and I have to say, it’s pretty cool. The new zone was absolutely swarming with people doing the new dailies, but there was surprisingly little ganking for being on a PvP server (probably because […]
The Combat Conundrum
Tuesday, March 25th, 2008A favorite topic among bloggers (and a long-time pet complaint of mine) is the relative lack of depth in MMOGs when it comes to your enemies. The one and only appropriate response to a monster showing up is to bash it over the head until it spills its delicious candy loot or die trying. They […]
Comment Carnage: Arguing and Blogging On The Internet
Monday, March 24th, 2008Today’s post is less about games, and more about the community that surrounds them. In particular, blogs and comments. While there are a lot of people who just play the games and then walk away from the computer, there are a significant number of people who participate in forums and a smaller number of people […]
Wii Wish You Just Had a Normal Controller
Saturday, March 22nd, 2008I waited in line for two hours to get my Wii, last year. That might not sound very impressive, but I live in Minnesota, and this was outdoors in Winter. Even bundled up in a heavy jacket with scarf, hat, and gloves, it was cold enough to freeze your bones. Fortunately, after those two hours […]
Less is More, When it Comes to Dialogue
Thursday, March 20th, 2008Warren Specter, of Deus Ex fame, did an interview recently where he was talking about some of the inherent problems with telling stories in games. It’s mostly the same stuff that the bloggers (me included) rehash every time this topic gets a little fire under it. For example:
After 20 years of saying this it’s still […]