In case you were wondering where I’ve been this week …

From his post on why Forums are Bad:

Only MMO developers provide their customers with forums. These forums enable the customers to talk to each other. As a medium of dialog between the developer and the customer, forums are terrible. When they are provided and moderated by the developer, they’re even pretty terrible at facilitating communication among players. Typically, players don’t talk about the game on official forums, they talk about the game company.

I’m drowning in GDC ‘goodness’ right now, but even far from my RSS reader it didn’t escape my notice that the next FFXI expansion will have chocobo racing and breeding! I know this has been announced for a little while, but 1up has pictures!

MMORPG.com has a ‘debate’ piece looking at both sides of gearing content for guilds. A lot of it smacks of the Learning from World of Warcraft article last month. My realistic opinion of one of the nay-sayers gets muddied when he says such obvious ‘devil’s advocate stuff as:

 Gameplay should NEVER be beyond the casual player.

Yuh-huh okiedokie good luck with that.

Two great MMOG communities are celebrating this week.

Usefully cynical commentary site F13 is celebrating it’s two-year anniversary. Lum has some words of congratulations, and Haemish reflects on the time it has been.

Meanwhile, Grimwell Online celebrates the return of the site’s Named mob. Grimwell has returned from the lands beyond, and the boards are already breathing again with commentary-driven life.

I lurk prodigiously at both of these boards, and always enjoy the snark. You should too.

I’ve been listening to TavernCast, a World of Warcraft podcast, since around Halloween of last year. I’m a big fan of folks looking at stuff from a POV I’m not familiar with, and these folks really help me to understand what the average player things about the game. Being plugged into the mmoblogosphere means never having to wait for information about patch notes, nerfs, or the latest stupidity. These folks are more mature players who have a decidedly different outlook on the game. They’re not desperate infohounds, they play to have fun, and they do a damn good performance.

They very kindly allowed me to sit in with them for a discussion about MMOGs within a greater societal context. Spurred by the ‘WoW as Golf’ article, they wanted to talk about what World of Warcraft meant as a more social space. We did that, and more.

Some additional discussion of what we talked about, and the podcast in general, follows.

PS: They let me plug MMOG Nation on the show, so a big welcome to anyone who followed my mumbled link. Thanks for visiting!

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Oh ho. What’s this?

MASSIVE Magazine is the ultimate guide to the world of massively multiplayer online games. It covers the games and culture with a progressive and breezy editorial style produced by the top writers in the industry. Issues of MASSIVE will include features on the games, their communities, guilds, profiles of top players, and other features that will make the magazine a part of the MMO world.

On the downside, I only give this thing even money that it ever makes it out the door. It’s slated for a first issue in September, and a lot can go wrong in six months. On the upside, I’m very glad someone’s trying this again. MOG Magazine had such potential … would have been nice if they’d made it to issue 2. And anyone else remember the SOE Worlds magazine? There isn’t even a working link for that thing on their site anymore.

As a writer, I’ll also cop to being excited about this on a selfish level. I’d love to get some stuff into a print magazine. If any of the CGM folks are reading this, I’m a pleasure to work with! :)