I’m very sorry that you’ve passed away.

As a player and a writer, I never had the chance to meet you in person. Primarily I know you from your writing and the games you worked on. I respect you a great deal, sir. I know many people that do, and will continue to remember you as a thoughtful commentator with a very well developed sense of humor.

Goodbye Mr. Freeman. And thank you for everything you’ve given to the community.

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The Warhammer database finally caught up with me, so my WAR sig is working, finally.

Brian Green has a great writeup about getting a gig in the game development industry, with a focus on MMO development.

One of the most important things to remember is that reputation isn’t based entirely on logic. It’s based on word of mouth, so you get some potential miscommunication as things go along. You can be a great worker that did everything to the best of your ability, but if the project is recognized as a tremendous flop, then that will potentially taint your reputation. Or, people may remember your loud arguments during the discussion phase of a project, but forget that you were one of the workers that buckled down and did things as ordered after the decisions were made.

His statements are great for folks thinking about games blogging / games journalism as well. Certainly the above holds true. I’ve known talented and intelligent writers who toil in obscurity, while overblown windbags make decent living wages working at big sites. Shame all around.

Good read.

Kirk at Priestly Endeavors notes that some healers are getting yelled at for their apparent lack of activity. WAR is a frenetic experience in RvR and scenarios, and anyone not moving is pretty obvious.

It seems that only the caster can see the animation for the heal.  The target only gets the little green number(s) in the midst of everything else.  And everybody else sees… maybe, the healer waving arms, but often just standing staring forward. Some have noted that when they’re getting nuked by at least some spells they don’t see animations either – just their health bar going down.  If they happen to be engaged with a DPS class it can lead to doing the wrong defensive moves – to include standing instead of moving to break LOS.

I’ve actually experienced this firsthand. I was deep in the thick of it, wailing on an Orc and healing up a storm. I really like this class. When the fray ended, I got a chewing out from a mouthy Witch Hunter about not healing anyone. “WHAT, YOU THINK YOU A ROUGE?”

I love what Mythic has done with healers in this game. It’s fantastic to be providing a benefit to other people in the game while also being able to do your own thing. Another jackass said something along the lines of “They think they are a Paladin, Haw haw!” I’d actually argue that the Warrior Priest is a better Paladin than the Paladin in most games. The cyclical nature of Attacks -> Healing Power -> Healing -> Attacks means the Priest can really last in a protracted battle.

Just hope they get this sticking point cleared up for the snarkish.

I read up on Van Hemlock’s adventures in A Tale in the Desert over at his site, and had a wave of nostalgia sweep over me. I played ATITD waaaay back during the first telling, actually quite a lot. Even convinced my wife to join me, and for a period of about two months we had our own little well-loved campsite full of ‘the stuff that you use to make stuff’ in ATITD. This was long before tents and other modern conveniences they’ve since added, so it was sort of a sprawling melange of distaff/stonegrinder/etc. all spread out on a hill. We were just a short walk away from a nice little river (source of various resources), and a short walk in either direction to one of the temples of learning spread across the region. It was very pleasant, really, and aside from the fact that the game itself tended to be a bit boring I have nothing but amazingly good memories from my time in Egypt.

The person that made the experience what it was, was this chap named Kaizen. I’d made my camp within walking distance of his, and purposely. He was my mentor starting out, the guy that I sort of randomly fell in with as a newbie to the world. This sort of thing was heavily encouraged when the game first came out, something obviated a bit by the newbie island nowadays. Kaizen was well into the ‘elder game’ of the title, making sculptures for contests, participating in Tests, and (most enjoyably) making lots and lots of wine. He’d have wine-tasting parties and my wife and I would meet up with him and a few other Egyptians to try out his stock. There was a wine tasting skill, and as it developed you could detect more subtle tastes and variations.
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For haters who think that micropayments are something that just teens, tweens, and Korean people do, you would be wrong. Over on Massively today we have a megaton explosion of awesome CoX news. They’re moving the Architect to Issue 14 because of player feedback, dropping a ton of new stuff in Issue 13, and are generally proving how much Matt Miller doesn’t need Jack Emmert to rock the Casbah.

The bit I’m personally very interested in is this post right here all about the success of the City of Heroes ‘booster pack’ system. Begun with the well-received wedding set, they released the first of their series packs with the Cyborg set. It’s kind of downplayed a bit in the interview there, but I have it on good authority that the Cyborg set has a RIDUNKULOUS sellthrough rate. Not 1:1, probably, but really fricking high. As a result NC NorCal is sitting pretty with talented designers, regular income from subscriptions, and an occasional much-appreciated boost from the microtransactional content.

What I’d love to see them do is drop the subscription price to pay back the players for buying into the MT content. Maybe someday, NorCal?

Update: I didn’t notice this till I wandered over to their store. $4.99 for a 30-day limited item? That I can get for free at Christmas? The value of the Cyborg and the Wedding packs are relatively high, but this jetpack thing should be more like a buck. At most.

I’m not going to recommend Order of the Stick. If you aren’t reading it yet, you probably don’t want to be.

I just wanted to note that today’s strip was really funny. Like, really funny on a deep and profound level. I laughed multiple times at the punchline, because the full comprehension of the punchline requires SO MUCH FORTHOUGHT as to be a work of art in and of itself.

By my guess to full appreciate this single comic strip, you need to have read hundreds and hundreds of comic strips. Just to get to the point where you can even understand the strip, let alone find it humorous.

I love you Rich Burlew. Keep on shining.