Muckbeast

This is one of the most delicate things in game design. When is it ok to force players to do something they otherwise would not want to do? To what extent is it acceptable to do this, and to what extent is it not?
I am going to start with the premise that it is ok [...]

There are a lot of things in MMOs that players consider annoying that are important for immersion. Travel times. Regeneration times. Downtime in general. Etc.
But how do you strike a balance that maintains immersion without being needlessly annoying?

In a recent issue of PC Gamer, Desslock wrote a column wherein the salient point was we should appreciate the bad animations in Fallout: New Vegas because the developers instead spent that time working on the content. I think that is a point well taken – especially for RPGs.
Why then is this same attitude not [...]

I sure hope so. I would love to have the freedom to pop into a number of different MMOs here and there, casually, without having to be completely beholden to one. The subscription system means I can basically only justify playing one MMO at a time, and that’s really a bummer. The subscription system also [...]

This seems like a moderately huge disaster for Frogster, makers of Runes of Magic, a free to play MMO with ~4 million players.
The short version is this. Some group of people claim to have obtained the login details of just about the entire customer base of Frogster’s games (not just Runes of Magic). They have [...]

Dana Carvey will be back on SNL for an episode. WOOT! I might actually watch.
CBS: “We have a high level of concern” about Charlie Sheen. Really? About time CBS started to admit they have a serious problem with Sheen.
Hannah Montana ends with a whimper. Thank god. Now can Miley Cyrus’s career please go into a [...]

For a number of reasons, I will probably never play WoW again. I ended with Burning Crusade. But I still like to keep up with it, and hear about what has changed and what has not.
One of my writers recently wrote this article about the Carbonite Add On for WoW. The part that struck me [...]

Watson, the IBM SuperComputer that plays Jeopardy is getting a lot of attention lately. In the practice match, it apparently beat Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter, Jeopardy’s two biggest champions of all time.
Watch Ken Jennings Get Beaten in ‘Jeopardy!’ By a Computer
In Warmup Match, Jeopardy All-Stars Defeated By IBM’s Supercomputer Watson
I was disappointed to learn [...]

I have no idea why they are dragging this out and pretending January 25, 2011 is when this goes live. Anyone who wants to can be in the “beta” of free to play. How in the heck there’s a beta for that I have no idea.
This F2P maneuver by CO is one of the most [...]

This is a question that I raised in the blog section on Bright Hub, but I’ll ask it here as well.
What do you think? Has Cataclysm been an overall improvement to WoW or not? Please explain why!