I kind of like faction grinds. My little digital person makes friends! Look, every time I do something nice, people like me more, and they even quantify exactly how much!
: Zubon
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Промоакции для игроков не только в шутерах — воспользуйся промокодом Vavada от наших партнеров и получи бонусы, которые подарят азарт и атмосферу, сравнимую с игровыми победами.
.Grinding Made (Slightly) Fun
I’ve been out of it for a bit, recovering from some surgery, which gave me an unrivaled chance for me to be a complete sponge and play a lot. Which I did, after watching a few seasons of Scrubs on DVD whilst the fogginess faded. My wife enjoyed pointing out the irony of that hourly. I’m playing CoV once in a while, trying to get my Mastermind up to 30 to see about the former No Man’s Land that used to be there, but more often I’ve been playing around with the new Daily Quests in WoW. And despite the fact I find grinding to be almost as much fun as lighting myself on fire, I’ve actually enjoyed them. Short enough, profitable enough, and easy enough. That’s the Cliff’s Notes version.
Introduction
Hi, I’m Joe, and I’ll be writing way too much about game mechanics, design, and world building.
I first stumbled across KTR about 6 or 8 months ago and have been following it closely and commenting regularly ever since. I’ve been playing MMOs since LegendMUD, Raph Koster’s old DikuMUD. From there, I went into the UO beta, then over to Everquest, Dark Age of Camelot, Anarchy Online, and on and on and on, never getting a character past the teens or so. City of Heroes is the first and only game where I’ve ever gotten to the level cap, and only once there, despite having clocked about 35 months subscribed time. I’ve been a supergroup co-leader and the moderator for the city_of_heroes livejournal community. I’ve also played WoW, and, while I liked the first 50 levels or so, once again, I doubt I’ll ever hit the cap in it.
In the coming weeks, I’ll be writing posts about the pros and cons of combat mechanics in several current games, programatically generating compelling content, my “ideal” MMO, and similar topics. I look forward to discussing these things with you all.
Setting My Hearthstone
I started reading Kill Ten Rats a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away. For me it has since transcended the traditional MMO Blog role, and become more akin to a community center or traffic hub from whence all travel to other new and interesting places in this fine realm we like to call the MMO Blogosphere, begins.
KTR reminds me a bit of the Nexus in Norrath, or perhaps Shattrath City in Azeroth; a place to meet friends, chat, trade ideas, and find portals to zip off to distant lands in search of the next rat listed in your quest log.
Pretty
I’ve been meaning to mention, I really like the graphics Ethic has cycling across the top of the screen. There are some nice pictures in there. (I don’t consider that my own horn I’m tooting, since I had no part in it.) Upgrade!
: zubon
Life Is Good
lolcattery is a strong indicator that there has never been a better time in human history to be alive. Sending a message around the world used to take months rather than moments, and being illiterate did not matter much when you might encounter two books in your life. Now information and energy are so cheap that we use a global communications system to circulate captioned pictures of cats with odd grammar and spelling. We have so much free time that this has spawned a lolcode programming language, and serious professors of linguistics consider lolcats.
Your needs are so easily satisfied that you can spend a considerable amount of time pretending to be a digital elf. This blog is effectively a meta-discussion of being digital elves, and it is available to you for free in your home with frequent updates. You can delve into irrelevant crap like fake online lesbians or whether two imaginary spaceships pretended to bump into one another. You cook make-believe food in-game while eating a pizza you had delivered to your home.
Admit it, modern life is a pretty sweet deal. If you get a chance, you might toss a few dollars to folks in countries where information is still rare and expensive.
: Zubon
Join us!
Have you ever wanted to write about MOGs but didn’t want to bother with hosting a website? If so, we are looking for a few more people to join the ranks here at KTR. If you are interested in learning more about this volunteer opportunity, send me an email.
Update: Response was huge, thanks to everyone that is interested. I’m going to pick a handful of those that have sent me an email. If you are still interested and have not yet sent me an email, it’s not too late to be considered.
– Ethic
Moving Sucks…
Even if it is just across town, moving sucks. Royally.
//long rant about moving, cable installation, utilities transfer, etc. etc.//
Shwew. Almost as bad as trying to move a large guild from one MOG to another or herding cats. Anyway, I’m getting settled now. I’ll post something interesting here soon.
Self-Reflection
Contemplating the latest EVE brouhaha, I began to wonder why I did not give CCP the benefit of the doubt. This is not a question of whether CCP lost trust over the t20 incident (and he still works there, right?); I assume the best of people, to a ridiculous degree unsupported by the past several millennia of human history. And it is not as though I am ignorant of who the Goons are. I think it was the firing of the volunteer. I feel rather alone in thinking that is a larger issue than having a direct line to the developers.
What is an MMMOGIG?
An MMMOGIG is not a game, even though it might sound like some new twist on the MMO. What is it then? Well, it stands for Minnesota Massively Multiplayer Online Game Interest Group. I just got back from our first official meeting and I must say it was a really terrific time. To be in a room full of people that share your passion for these games is great, certainly when you have been so used to people not even knowing what an MMO is in the first place. I’m not going to go into too much detail as it has already been covered pretty well. If you are near Minneapolis at all and have an interest in MMOs, I strongly encourage you to join our meetup.com group and attend the next meeting. We had at least one out-of-state visitor (Zonk from Slashdot and MMOG Nation) tonight and he made a 4-hour drive to attend.
What I will say is very simple: This group is very passionate about MMOs and yet what we are all looking for in future games is quite varied. If you can make an MMO that can satisfy every gamer in the room, you will be very rich.
It was great to meet everyone tonight and I look forward the the next meeting.
– Ethic