Last week the Wrath of the Lich King information drop really brought Blizzard’s view into focus. I’ve been saying for some time now that they were holding something back - a fairly obvious comment. What I didn’t really appreciate is how informative a news reveal would be when it finally hit. I’d expected some sort of specific feature, like another Hero class or some moderate old world revamping. Instead we got … well, basically a manifesto. In between the back-of-the-box features they’ve let slip, we can see the impressions of a very specific boot tread.

Blizzard is now a company marching to battle with a very specific plan: World of Warcraft is going to be a very, very casual-friendly game. You think it’s casual now, you haven’t seen anything yet. Cameron’s already done a bangup job of commenting on this over at Massively, but I’d be remiss if I didn’t do some commentating of my own. Aside from gross generalizations, I specifically want to address a few things I noticed in the interviews with Kaplan and Chilton … things that made me very curious indeed.

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Friday I put up my third GWJ article, this one exploring the dark mirror that is Grand Theft Auto IV.

I like Niko Bellic, and I’m not sure what that says about me. Grand Theft Auto IV’s protagonist is kind of a dick, no two ways about it. While he stumbles into a situation far removed from what he was expecting, the demands placed on him soon balloon far beyond a rationale person’s tolerance. Not five hours into the game’s main storyline you’re killing people in cold blood for not much more than a verbal insult.

Still, despite it all, I like Niko. I enjoy his tale in a way that I haven’t enjoyed the story in any other GTA title, and that makes me profoundly uncomfortable. GTA is fundamentally about 3 things, and they’re all uncomfortable: violence, race, and sex. That these things speak to me is troubling and intriguing, tapping into the basest elements of humanity. It feels like there are three monkeys on my back. Hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil … it’s so archetypal it’s almost silly.

Ready for a peek into my subconscious? Me neither.

If you haven’t yet, make sure to check out the Warhammer Online video about Living Guilds; this is the kind of thing I’m talking about when I mention how pumped I am about WAR’s potential.

That said, I think every game has hurdles to overcome in the area of player groupings. Witness, if you will, a posting by Stargrace over at MMOQuests. She’s working on her endgame crafting works, and she needs a bunch of crafted content to complete the quest. So she works at getting in touch with some crafters, makes some headway, but it sounds like she’s a bit daunted. Then:

“I get a tell, from Omay, who says they have ALL the crafters, and can make every piece for me. I sat there stunned for a second, it sounded too good to be true. Not only do they make all of the pieces, they are a guild dedicated to crafting, and helping others craft … After they’d crafted every single piece for me, they played fire works and congratulated me, and on my way I went for the turn in … Here I’d thought there was no crafting community on Najena - the channels are practically always silent. Low and behold, an entire guild dedicated to it.”

One of the (many) features players really need in these games is the ability to know what their options are on the guild front. This guild that helped stargrace, “Wing and a Prayer”, sounds like a fantastic outfit. But because the playerbase is so scattered and segmented, she had no idea they were even out there. WAR’s keep-capturing elements are great, and I look forward to that a lot. At the very least, players who come across a captured keep will know *those* guilds exist. But we need more. We need something even more meaningful than that. You know what we need?

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This past weekend I sat down with the Gamers w/Jobs crew to talk Age of Conan, and that Grand Theft something-er-other game that seems to be very popular these days.

Age of Conan, Mario Kart, Grand Theft Auto IV, Rob Off The Rails, Your Emails and more! Michael Zenke joins us for our in-depth impressions of Grand Theft Auto IV. Does Sean still hate it? Will the vein on Rob’s forehead burst? Can Michael inject some sanity into the conversation?!

The answer? Probably not. But it was fun to try.

Games can define your state of mind. I think that’s pretty obvious, a self-evident statement from a guy who loves games speaking to an audience who loves games. What I find interesting is how games can wear mental grooves into your consciousness. For folks coming home from tough jobs, MMOs fill the vicarious adventure void in their lives. Mothers turn to puzzle games, college students to FPSes, for lots of people in our culture there are titles that offer comfort and solace on whatever level you’re seeking.

For me, the Massive genre itself is my ‘comfort game’. It doesn’t really matter what game I’m playing, just as long as I’m online in a persistent space. WoW has its obvious draw, but I’ve recently found Guild Wars to be particularly comforting; running quests with a forest of henchmen and heroes is incredibly appealing. collaboration between the Eye of the North Heroes with those from Nightfall leads to evocative mental stories. Interesting stuff.

What I’m interested in is how the online experience extends this ‘comfort level’. Playing GTA IV this weekend I basically finished Raph’s Koolaid cup; in ten years every game is going to have some sort of online/MMO element. I think it’s a given. Nick Fortugno, at IMGDC, talked about the ’semi-multiplayer’ elements of Pogo.com games; I’m curious as to how much the human element is involved for comforting people as they play.

Funny title, probably a useless article to you. But still … I try.

Even with the help of other players, making it to the top is long road. That journey is one to be enjoyed, as leveling a character in WoW is (for many people) the real game. That said, once you have your first character at max level, retaking those same steps to the top can be frustrating. Going over the same content for the second, third, fourth time is just never quite the same.

Today we have on offer a few simple tools to help you make it through ‘the grind’ in a reasonable amount of time with minimal hair-pulling. Some of these are technical in nature, some are simple techniques, and some are simple platitudes that we’ve found helpful in the past. Read on, and make sure to grasp the handrail tightly up the escalator.