Muckbeast

Feel free to share your predictions for 2011’s MMO industy. I will start with a few of mine.
1) People will be relatively bored/done with Cataclysm in about half as much time as WotLK. It seems to me that WotLK was the big pro-casual innovation, and this expansion really did not add much. I also think [...]

A number of major MMOs switched from subscription to free to play in 2010. Inspired by the game saving transition made by Dungeons and Dragons Online, and watching free-to-play games get all the users (aside from WoW of course), a number of major companies decided to change gears and give it a shot. Do you [...]

How many programmers are reading this? Those of you who program either professionally or as a hobby, have you ever had a near disaster that you averted at the last minute? Have you ever nearly done a “rm -rf *” that you stopped before you realized you were in the wrong directory? Have you ever [...]

We’ll try this as an occasional blog post. Links to interesting TV news items.
Christina Hendricks wants to play wonder woman. I find it very hard to object to that. She seems a worthy successor to Linda Carter.
FCC approves Comcast-Universal merger. But only if “With that in mind, the proposed conditions on FCC approval include [...]

MOBA stands for Multiplayer Online Battle Arena. It is a really terrible acronym. I think they should have gone with MMORTS, but whatever. The granddaddy of MOBA games is a Warcraft 3 mod called DotA – Defense of the Ancients. There are now two commercial MOBAs out there. League of Legends (LoL) is the more [...]

This isn’t my usual type of blog post, but it is relevant because of a topic I am hoping to post on soon in great detail. That topic is the phenomenon of businesses treating their customers with hostility, and how that is almost always extremely unwise and counterproductive.
In this case, the issue is DVR users [...]

This little bit of news really makes me angry. OnLive awarded important patent on streaming gaming content. The incredibly broad scope of this patent is an absolute joke.
“The present invention provides a system in which video games may be widely distributed and played without the need for multiple platform-specific hardware units or purchase [...]

Congrats to Blizzard. They set a new sales record by selling 3.3 million copies of Cataclysm in the first 24 hours. That’s really great because I know those hard working, under-appreciated folks really needed the money…
But why just 3.3 million? I mean, if you play WoW, is it really an option whether or not you [...]

Mostly, I am sharing this simply because it is pretty interesting and shocking information. But to make keep it on topic, I put forth this question: would it be a cool game feature if you could perform a last action, or a few last actions, after death? In what circumstances would this be a neat [...]

The crowd control discussion led me to this question. Why is it so hard to balance melee vs. ranged in MMOs? In the last 10 years, it seems like ranged has had the clear and overwhelming advantage. It is almost always far more rewarding and enjoyable to play a ranged character in most MMOs. Melee [...]

If I’m going to bother posting on this blog at all, I need to post more frequently and actually give people a reason to check back often. My goals going forward:

10 more posts for Dec.
At least 20 posts in Jan 2011.

All I ask from readers:

Share the blog link with some friends.
Post comments!

I was reading a review of a game in PC Gamer and there was a comment that said something like “sadly, the game only supports LAN multiplayer.” I can understand the disappointment, but I also wished PC Gamer would express similar disappointment with games that ONLY support online multiplayer and no LAN multiplayer.
Starcraft II and [...]

Crowd Control… Stun, Mesmerize, Sleep, Knockdown, Knockup, Silence, Root, Hold, etc. What do you think of abilities/effects like these in games. And I mean both in the hands of players, mobs, and for PvE and/or PvP.
How are they used well?
How are they used poorly?
I have my own thoughts, and they are strong ones, but I’d [...]