This edition of the Snarkcast is a little longer than normal, and we go a bit further in-depth into certain issues than we usually do, but we hope you enjoy it.
Yeah, I know. We haven’t been as diligent as we should be in updating the site with the latest and greatest news in MMO land. On the other hand, we’re too busy playing them to write much.
In preparation for our next SnarkCast and because Krystalle can be, at times, a moderating influence on me, I have prepared a Christmas “Naughty or Nice?” list of stories, people, and things that have happened in the past year. Don’t expect anything even remotely “correct” or “political”.
Nice
World of Warcraft’s 3.3 patch
The new content is nice, but the LFG tool has made dungeon groups fun again. I don’t think I’ve seen a wait time longer than 10 minutes for a dungeon. I love to bag on WoW on the SnarkCast, but I must give credit where it is due. 3.3 has me playing again… a lot.
The folks at Fallen Earth have come up with a rather nifty game set in a Post Apocalyptic American Southwest. (Grand Canyon, to be specific) If you’re in the mood to check out a game that departs from the average fantasy-based WoW clone, I highly recommend this one. It’s from a small, independent studio so there are some warts in the game, but the community is tight-knit and the in-game customer service staff is responsive. Enjoy.
SOE has a lot going on. There is a new EQ expansion out there (16!!!), more EQII content on the way, and Free Realms has gotten off to a very good start. That, and Brenlo and the gang are lots of fun to hang out with at Dragon*Con.
Ok, enough of the syrupy sweet, here comes the “coal in the stocking”…
Naughty
Aion
A craptacular grindfest which is packaged in eye candy is still a craptacular grindfest. The fact that NCSoft, a studio which seems all-too-eager to pull the plug on MMO’s that don’t make enough money for them, is behind it leads me to believe that this title won’t have much staying power. (Tabula Rasa, anyone?)
MMO’s which are basically LAN-party sized games with a giant chat lobby.
Ok, so it isn’t Guild Wars’ fault that so many new games are adopting this approach, but for the love of Curt Schilling, can we stop calling games that are chat lobbies for 5-10 player “dungeons” MMORPGs? Raiding Temple of Veeshan with 300 players is Massive. Raiding Molten Core with 40 players is Massive. Sitting in a chat lobby until you can mash together a 5 man group in order to run a dungeon is NOT Massive. If you can’t get out of the quest hub and explore the world, it’s not an MMO. If “the world” is instanced to the point that you have zero chance of randomly encountering another player in it, it is not an MMO. It can still be a great game, but call it something else.
Ok, so I was super stoked about buying this game. So much so that I got the 6 month subscription (thus guaranteeing me a place in the Star Trek Online beta, which I am currently enjoying) I played it for about a week, then realized… Grind-tacular snorefest. The comic book style graphics are interesting and the game has a world of promise, but do us all a favor. Reduce the level cap by half and cram what content you have into those levels. Gaps in content make levelling an endless chore. If I wanted that, I’d have stayed in Everquest. I hope Star Trek Online is listening…
As always, this is just my opinion. I can’t help it that I’m right.
Merry Christmas!
-Grim
P.S. as an added bonus, and because I’ve mentioned her in just about every SnarkCast we’ve done, here’s a Christmas pic of Samantha.
You may see this plastered somewhere around the convention. When I tell you that we can always use creative talent, this is why. I actually had to do this bit of photoshoppery myself.
Jul 252009
Yeah, I realize that I’m going to run out of sequel titles to use in these posts and that I’ll be repeating myself soon. I’ll deal with that problem when I get there.
It’s been a crazy week in the land of SnarkCast, and Krys and Grim have already been overtaken by events given that we recorded this podcast before:
- The Dragon*Con Staff Meeting last weekend.
- Blizzard was allowed to partially re-launch WoW in China.
Oh well, them’s the breaks. In any event, enjoy the podcast (show notes are included after the jump). Thanks for listening, and we’ll be recording a new podcast very soon.
May 312009
I know I promised you guys more frequent updates. Consider this a mini-update until I have time to write a real one later this week.
- Voltaire is confirmed. You may resume breathing. (And V, if you’re an MMO fan, we would LOVE to have you MC a few contests for us. Otherwise, *I* might have to do it again this year.)
- We have added a Second Life panel.
- We have added a Guild Wars panel.
- We are working on a Pirates of the Burning Sea panel.
- We have re-added Champions Online. (No Cryptic, but I think you guys will like this…)
We are co-hosting a very special panel with the Space track this year. It seems that NASA did some work on an MMO in the recent past, and even got to the point where they brought in Timothy Zahn to help with the game design. Since we just happen to have Les Johnson from NASA and Mr. Zahn at Dragon*Con this year, we thought it might be a neat idea to discuss the MMO that might have been.
Our Snark Cast is officially on hiatus until my lovely and talented co-host returns from E3 and recovers sufficiently to put up with me once again.
To end things, I thought I would post an old pic that was rediscovered in Ol’ Chumbucket’s archives recently. Behold, a picture of the infamous “Meridian 59 Guy” panel!
(From left to right: Alihja, Grim, Crumpster, and “The Meridian 59 Guy”)
First off, let me say that Brian “Psychochild” Green is a super nice guy, and I’m glad that he has kept M59 going strong after 14 years (launched in late 1995, went public in 1996) and we wish him nothing but the best. However, this was an Everquest panel. The other three people you see at that table are/were EQ players. The subject was EQ and the focus was on game design elements of EQ. If Brian started a sentence with words other than “In my game, Meridian 59…” we are unaware of it. It was one of the more infamous (funny in retrospect) panels that we had ever run. Despite all of that, he did have some really good insights into game design that have since become part of the mainstream, more or less. Remember, back when we did this panel 4 years ago, WoW was the new kid on the block and wasn’t the monster MMO that it is today. We only had 3 WoW panels that year, as opposed to an entire day devoted to WoW this year.
Maybe later this week, I’ll post a “history in pictures” of the MMO track and you can see just how far we have come in 7 years, bearing in mind that we weren’t an official track at Dragon*Con until last year.