James

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Cat Figurine: 1/46

I was telling a friend a couple weeks ago about the Spectral Tiger pet from the Warcraft CCG. Sexy blue sheen and transparency for the low, low price of only $500 on eBay. They do look pretty awesome, but $500. Holy shit! That’s when my friend told me about the tameable Ghost Sabers you can get. No sexy blue sheen, but you get the transparency for a fraction of the cost. And by “fraction of the cost” I mean “free.”

But surely, they wouldn’t happen to be the level I needed, right? I checked Petopia and was pleasantly surprised to see that the ghost sabers are levels 19 and 20. My main at the time was a level 19 (I just restarted) Blood Elf. Perfect!

Continue reading Cat Figurine: 1/46

Ghost towns

What’s up with MMO developers creating isolated cities in their games?

It’s odd. In WoW, we’ve get Darnassus and Silvermoon City both in the middle of nowhere. There’s all this beautiful content that you pretty much never experience unless you’re a newbie, or have to go there for an occasional quest. And on those occasions, it’s a lonely, isolating experience.

It doesn’t seem to be a mistake — after all, this had clearly already happened with Darnassus when Blizzard devided to build Silvermoon out in the boonies. I hear that when the expansion first came out, Silvermoon was teeming with noobs. Now it’s pretty desolate.

I saw the same thing in Asheron’s Call. After the initial release, all player activity coalesced into a few cities. The rest were ghost towns — a bunch of NPC’s hanging out, staring at each other from their storefronts day to day.

Does this happen in most MMO’s, or are these exceptions? Are there reasons I’m missing for not making these cities more centrally located?

Let Us Play, Blizzard!

Yesterday I talked about how some friends and I on different servers who wanted to PvP together have had to level characters to 19 on a new server to do so. What’s more, we’re unlikely to ever level together far enough to play AV or Arena.

I suspect I’m not the first person to make the following suggestions. I suspect I’m probably more like the (hundred?) thousandth. But humor me… can someone explain to me why Blizzard erects such huge barriers to PvP participation?

If it were up to me, I’d tweak WoW PvP as follows:

Continue reading Let Us Play, Blizzard!

If You Crush Your Enemy’s Skull and Nobody is Around to Hear It, Does It Make a Sound?

Some friends and I recently decided to do some battlegrounds together. Not being on the same servers, we had to create newbies and do the grind to 19. We’ll probably be stuck with WSG, and AV (much less Arena) is pretty much out of the question for us.

Anyway, this drove me to try out the Fury beta recently. Fury is getting a fair dose of hype as an upcoming fantasy MMO focusing exclusively on PvP. You’ve got standard PvP scenarios — free-for-all, team deathmatch, and CTF, with third-person WoW-style fantasy combat. There is not a persistent world, but there is persistent character advancement with skill trees you advance in to customize your character. Battleground-style PvP without the grind! Sounds great, right?

I was surprised that I got bored of it fairly quickly, and it wasn’t until I was writing this that I realized why: Fury isn’t an MMO at all.

Continue reading If You Crush Your Enemy’s Skull and Nobody is Around to Hear It, Does It Make a Sound?

Introduction

Hi, I’m James. I’m new here.

I wish I could say that I’ve been reading KTR for months in between running raids with my 70’s. The reality is that despite being a passionate gamer my whole life, I spent much of the MMO revolution of the past decade watching from the sidelines. Other life priorities at the time. I’m here at KTR because I’m in the process of changing that.

When I play, I’m 40% explorer, 40% achiever, and 20% socializer. I will explore that stupid little cave just becuase I haven’t been in it, and I will run the long way to fill in that empty corner of my map. I may even hurl myself off a cliff to certain death just for the novelty of the experience. (I actually do this on a pretty regular basis, and yes, it sometimes annoys my group.) But I will also take the time to keep my fishing skill up to snuff, because I need to be prepared to kick some ass if I find myself in Stranglethorn Vale for that fishing competition one of these days.

Right now, I’m splitting my time between Azeroth and the Viridian Ocean. “The Viridian Ocean? What’s that?” Puzzle Pirates, silly. It rocks.
Continue reading Introduction