Whereas the stinky-cheese bad Massive Online Gamer made me question the sanity of anyone publishing a MMOG-related periodical, Massive does a fantastic job reporting on the genre. I know I’m a little late to the party, but I’ll admit: I was avoiding it out of fear. I shouldn’t have worried. They have really nailed their first issue, with some insightful commentaries on guilds, MMOG history, and modding. I particularly enjoyed the weighty voice contributions. With Richard Bartle, Raph, Nick Yee, Richard Garriot, and Brad McQuaid all contributing to your first issue, you’ve got to be doing something right. Nicely done, CGM. You deserve cookies … except for the part where you called Mr. Koster ‘Ralph’ on your web site. :)

I put up a story on Slashdot yesterday that ended up getting a pretty brisk conversation started. Slate’s opinion piece on The Lameness of Warcraft generated over 250 comments, and bumped a sectional story to the mainpage. Good work me.

From the comments:

sheer genius by theStorminMormon (883615)

You’re a rat, and the game keeps sending you to look for bigger pellets.

People never tire of making that analogy, do they? But it’s probably about the most worthless analogy you could make. Reducing an activity to stimulus/response may seem clever, but the trouble is that it works for pretty much every human behavior imaginable. And it certainly works for every leisure activity.

The problem is that games are supposed to be fun. You’re going to have to work really hard to come up with an alternative criteria. And since fun is pretty subjective, there’s really not much room for criticism.

Art, literature, poetry, drama and film all have associate bodies of academic criticism and pop-derivatives. So there’s a semi-objective framework from which you can criticize these works even if they are popular. Everyone rushes out to see “Titanic”, but it still had some really, really lame dialog.

Unless you’re going to make a similar attack on gaming (e.g. lame dialog, bad graphics, etc.) it’s really hard to make any criticism that doesn’t reduce to petulant whining. There simple is no cohesive theory of gaming criticism (outside of technical elements), and so before you start slinging criticisms you need to build the framework. I don’t see that happening in this article.

So basically, it’s just whining.

It’s an alternate week, so I managed to get up a Citizen Spotlight on GameSetWatch. It was a blast being able to talk with Brent about his site. His insight into running VirginWorlds was a lot of fun to take in, and I think we managed to cover some territory that might appeal to more than just blog junkies. Good stuff.

Michael: On that note, what kind of response has the VirginWorlds Podcast received? How many folks listen, what kind of feedback do you get, etc?
Brent: Very positive. At this time there are about 1300 listeners each week. I get about 20-30 emails from people every week. Some ask questions, some thank me for the show, and some have ideas for me. The thing that has shocked me most about the feedback I get is the consistency. The 55 iTunes reviews that have been posted all echo similar themes and the listeners have latched onto some qualities that I never noticed until they started pointing them out. It is very enlightening and luckily, the feedback is positive as well. :) 

Just as quickly as I mention my discontent, I’m over it. Now, given, this wasn’t on purpose. You see, apparently my Xbox 360 reads the interwebs. And (also apparently) it would rather commit suicide than allow me to angst about my favorite game genre.

…

So, instead of playing Gears of War tonight, I cracked the seal on my copy of Faydwer, and checked out the totally not gay faerie critters SOE put into the latest EQ2 expansion. They’re actually really well done, and seeing the Faydark in its new form is a total kick. I went back to my half-elf wizard pretty quickly though. Really, once you’ve fallen from the trees and been chased by orcs a few times, it’s like ‘Yeah, I’ve done this before.’ Less cynically, Crushbone remains one of my favorite places in a virtual world evar, and I’m looking forward to the chance to return.

So … that uh, other game, that I was downloading yesterday. It um … sure was big.  An unheard-of size for me and my pitiful 70 gig games HD, actually. It also took longer than any sane human should be able to bear. The evolutionary processes of the fruitfly were dramatically enhanced during the time it took me download this thing, is what I’m saying. I hop in, I make a cleric-variant character, and poof! Uhhh … why do I only have 9 FPS?

I have a number of months in my head that I think this thing needs before it can be released, and I’m hoping the game’s creators realize that this number? It is larger than 5.

Oh, Massively Multiplayer games, I miss you so.

I am installing the Beta for a new offering as I type this. There are many weeks yet to go before the Burning Crusade is released. I was eve having some measure of fun in Star Wars Galaxies about a month ago. All that, of course, has changed with a maelstrom of new console titles. I’ve bearly used my PC for gaming at all in the last few weeks, and I hardly see that changing any time soon. After all, I have high hopes I’ll have a new console in my home within a week. (wii!)

Truly, I wish I could have my cake and eat it too. I greatly enjoyed my time playing FFXI on the 360 (and, in fact, thinking of it makes me want to pick up my subscription again), but otherwise there’s just really not a lot going on in the console space for Massive hags. Phantasy Star Universe is something I’ve always wanted to get into, but from the sounds of things my time would be better spent elsewhere.

Looking to the future, Huxley is still quite a ways away. The upcoming Superhero MMOGs are in the same boat, and I just don’t see a lot of options from where I’m sitting.

Remember back in the day, when games like CoH, WoW, and even SWG were rumoured to be coming to the Xbox? Or the super-awesomo True Fantasy Live Online? Taken from us before it even saw the light of day (along with sister game Mythica), it was the console MMOG that I was most looking forward to.

So it goes. I will somehow manage to carry on, with my Final Fantasy XII and my Gears of War. But still, might MMOGs, I look upon you and the genre I love so much and sigh.

I was slated to host the Carnival of Gamers in January, but looks like I’m going to be hosting December instead. Yay! Christmas-theme Carnival! :D Or something.

I also *was* going to hold off on the call for submissions until Friday, but some early buttonmashing readers have already seen Tony’s post about the change in venue and have submitted articles. So! I’d be remiss in not telling you to go ahead and get those submissions in.

Given that I get to host the last Carnival of a very important year in videogames, I’m trying to come up with something particularly amusing as a theme. If any of you have PS3 or Wii rants out there, please make sure and get them submitted. MMOGBloggers too! Because, well, you’re my people. :)

Submit!

My host moved some servers around this past week/weekend, so my apologies if you couldn’t load the site.

I was frustrated as well, because I wanted to post about last week’s MMOG Nation article on GameSetWatch. It grew out of homework given out by Psychochild after the Project Horseshoe event, and just kind of ‘went’ from there. It’s about the legitimacy of Massive games, and the lack thereof in popular culture.

Yes, I’ve seen the South Park episode about World of Warcraft. Yes, I thought it was pretty funny. No, I don’t think that means Massive games are ‘legitimate’. Actually, as a brief aside, I’m prone to thinking that we’re pretty darn close with gaming in general. Even if the now-fading “Greatest Generation” doesn’t get gaming, the “Baby Boomers” raised kids right alongside console games. My mom is looking forward to giving the Wii a try, and that has to be a step in the right direction. What my mom couldn’t care less about, though, is these ‘online thingies’. In fact, when I discuss them with my in-laws, it’s a battle just to explain the concept. “You play a game where you kill these orc guys? And it’s not just you, it’s lots of other people that help you out. It’s … umm … fun?”