Muckbeast

One of my top writers, Jesma, got the pay-per-view broadcast of BlizzCon and is writing articles with news and updates. She is taking her own screencaps as well!
Some interesting developments have already taken place:
Friday:
BlizzCon 2009 Kicks Off – Friday BlizzCon Highlights
Saturday:
World of Warcraft Cataclysm Expansion – New Zones
World of Warcraft Cataclysm – Race and [...]

While often fodder for amusing videos and funny jokes, the way “noobs“ are derided in MMO culture is a very disturbing thing. While it is nothing new for insular hobbies or communities to be hesitant to embrace newcomers, MMO Elitism seems to take this to new levels. “Leet“ (or 3l33t, or elite) players take newbie [...]

This is sure to be controversial, but hopefully you will find the analysis and insights reasonably sound and share your own opinions.
What Went Wrong with Warhammer Online? A Postmortem.
The big question really is whether or not WAR can turn the ship around. Honestly, I am dubious at the moment. The next few months will really [...]

The arguments and analysis from this article will surely generate significant agreement and disagreement. I must admit that I found the points well made and well argued.
Why World of Warcraft is Badly Designed
I particularly agree with the sections on Quest Grinding (surprise, surprise), Time over Skill, terrible class balance, poor UI that relies too much [...]

This story has been reported in a few places, and of course EA makes it sound like they just parted ways, but the ugly truth is pretty obvious. Warhammer grossly underperformed, and as a result Mark Jacobs has been sacked. While I feel he and EA/Mythic did a horrible job overall with Warhammer (despite it [...]

Metaplace is the current project of highly regarded developer Raph Koster. In a nutshell, it is a community of user created worlds that can be social hangouts, games, “MMOs”, etc. Users have extensive tools to create their worlds. Adele Caelia wrote a good review of Metaplace on Bright Hub, if you need more details.
Have any [...]

I gave in. I now have twitter accounts for Muckbeast , Threshold RPG, and Primordiax. Please follow both so I can feel like the things I post there are actually being (potentially) read by someone.
Muckbeast on twitter
Threshold RPG on twitter
Primordiax on twitter

I have been hearing a lot about this game lately. When you look at the screenshots, you almost think you are looking at WoW. So they are definitely targeting WoW players with the look and feel. I have not tried the game out, but I did download it. I just haven’t had time to give [...]

Adding to the last Free Realms post, one of the Bright Hub writers has posted an interview with the Free Realms Developers:
Interview: Free Realms
I wish I had been able to get her to ask more poingant questions about the harsh dropoff between free and subscriber.

Many of you have heard about Sony’s free MMO: Free Realms. Its release was definitely timed well. It has been able to dominate a lot of the MMO media buzz since there is not much else going on in the industry right now.
Some of you (like me) might wonder what you get for being a [...]