For those of us new to the World of Warcraft this push is the first time we’ve been able to play as members of the Horde. It was definitely worth the wait. The Alliance races are wonderful. The humans are chaotic and frantic, the dwarves are stern and proud, the gnomes are cute and ..um..cute, and the Night Elves are regal in their forest homes. The Horde races have an entirely different feel to them. The Tauren and their lands exude an almost mystical sense of calm. The Orcs have a gruff honor about them, and the Trolls a frantic urgency. The Undead are at the same time repulsive and sad. The Horde is a interesting mixed bag. Today I’m going to take a brief look at the lands of the Undead and the Tauren.

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Richard Bartle’s very well read Players who Suit Muds is an essay designed to give players and designers a way to talk about Player Types. It’s an incredibly useful tool, and was later made into a test designed to measure your Bartle Quotient. If you’ve ever seen someone’s signature and it said something like “34% Explorer, 42% Socializer”, they were referring to their results from the Bartle test. This is all well and good, but how do the concepts of Player Types actually help us as players? It’s nice to be able to brand yourself in such a way that people understand you, but what is the benefit? In the past, the different MMOGs have been examined for what kinds of players they mainly appeal to. I’m going to go into some specifics today as regards how the different player types will interact with some of the newer games that we’ve seen become available. Down at the bottom of this article I’ve included a list of most of the major MMOGs and the player types they cater to.

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You can always say one thing about Blizzard. They do not do things halfway. The new client download for the World of Warcraft Beta made fundamental changes to the game last week, which the testers are even now still working out. Reading through the Patch Notes is a little like seeing the developer’s notes for a game still in concept. The fundamental changes wrought by the newest push are far reaching and are going to take a while to come to understand.

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Today I’ll be talking briefly about the basis of any MMOG economy, the currency. Currency in Massively Multiplayer games is almost universally oversimplified. Coin standards in vastly different games have an overwhelming similarity because game designers are content to use familiar conventions. Players don’t mind because they don’t have to learn a new currency system. But when talking about world immersion or in-world consistency, does the same old same old make sense?

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Beta players are experiencing something of a lull at the moment. The new push is going to be available for download this week, with substantial enough changes that we’re going to have to completely redownload the client. Included in the next push are going to be all of the Hoard races, the Druid class, and a host of changes and fixes. Next week’s WoW Journal will be chok-a-block with new push information. Since I don’t have much else to discuss, I’ll talk a little bit about where I’ve been lately.

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We now return you to your semi-regularly scheduled programming. For the near future, I’m going to get out a Random Dialogue as per normal on Monday, and a WoW Beta Journal on Thursday. Very sorry about last week, but a small touch of the plague had me (and Ekim as well) down and distracted. I am feeling much better, and you should be enjoying a full set of editorials and features this week. Today, I’m going to talk about those unrespected actors that make our MMOG lives so rewarding…the Non-Player Character. Non-Player Characters (NPCs) are a type of mob used to populate the world of a massively multiplayer game with “people”. For your consideration this week are short discussions on NPC interaction and memory, their places in the world, and their relations to Player Characters. This week’s Random Dialogue is dedicated to Martin Sayer, my favorite NPC, who taught me that children as loot equals a gnoll slaying sword.

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Since moving to the RedRidge mountain area, I’ve been thinking a lot about storytelling. In World of Warcraft, storytelling is accomplished through questing. Quests are the primary means of getting experience, a good source of cash, a connection to the overarching plot of the game world, a way to improve your tradeskills, and a breadcrumb to introduce you to other area. Today I’d like to introduce you to some of the different types of quests you’ll encounter exploring the lands of Azeroth.

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