As of just a little while ago, the last 2006 chapter in the MMOG Nation Citizen Spotlight series should have gone up on GameSetWatch.  Today we’ve got a look at The Cesspit, a hive of MMOG design scum and villainy if ever there was one. Abalieno has an extremely enthusiastic muse, and thus when you ask him a ’simple’ question like ‘What games are you looking forward to?’, he has a tendency to respond in detail. In the interests of readability, the GameSetWatch post has an edited version of our interview; here, I have no such restrictions. For the complete and unedited word from the man, please feel free to read on.
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My GameSetWatch column for this week is pretty straightforward: How They’re Going to Screw up the Firefly MMOG. I try not to mince too many words here because, well, they’re gonna.

They’ve got the license, and undoubtedly have the rights to use the likenesses of the protagonists in the game. So, why wouldn’t they use them? The most compelling reason I can think of is that they’d get in the way. If there’s one thing every Massive game gets right, it’s that the experience should be about the player’s story. If Malcolm Reynolds and the crew of the Firefly-class ship Serenity are included in the game (as I suspect they will be), the only purpose they would really serve would be to degrade the experience of the individual players.

Update 1: Dan Dormer was nice enough to give the article a very nice nod from the VGM Watch site. Thanks, Dan!

Update 2: Joystiq linked back to the post, and sparked a lot of great conversation on the subject. Good stuff.

Update 3: Warcry put up a link to the post … no comments, but he says ‘gorram’. So … funny. :)

Update 4: I’m pretty cynical about tar internets at this point, but being linked to from Whedonesque? That’s pretty cool. The site also linked to an interview with Corey Bridges, talking little bit about the project at a site dedicate to the game. Fireflymmo.com just got added to my Bloglines feed, thankyouverymuch.

Update 5: A meta-article about issues raised in my own piece is up on EQVault: What Makes a Great MMO Universe?

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Right. So, yesterday’s featureful day for MMOG Nation turned out to be topsy-turvy. Work was much harsher than I had imagined, and I just didn’t have the moments in the day to get everything on the site I wanted to. My GameSetWatch column also got bumped to today.

All well and good; today looks to be smooth sailing.

So, first thing you want to do is go take a peek at today’s MMOG Nation column: Citizen Spotlight on Tobold’s MMORPG Blog. He had some great responses to my canned questions, and I did my level best to pick out some of his best posts. Good stuff.

For me playing a MMORPG is an eternal series of small proud moments. You set yourself a small goal, work towards it, and achieve it. That might take as little as half an hour, or as much as several months. But the experience for me is more important than the achievement. The proudest achievement was probably when my troll warrior in World of Warcraft hit level 60, because after years and years of playing MMORPGs that was the first time I hit the level cap in any game. But my friar performing a marriage ceremony in the cathedral of Camelot in DAoC, in front of a huge crowd, was my proudest role-playing moment.

When something falls into your lap like The Free Ryzom Campaign, you don’t throw it out like the drunk it is. Instead, you buy it another drink and hope it starts making sense sometime soon.

I gave it the old college try over at GameSetWatch today, and (to my eyes) kind of ended up talking around myself in circles. Ahh well. I always have next week to do better.

“In the long term, this could mean the beginning of a game that is truly dynamic. With the Ryzom Ring toolset available to everyone, players and interested third parties could create zones and scenarios, which could then be integrated into the actual game by Ryzom’s keepers. Given the lack of a financial stake in the game, the game’s minders could execute truly game-shaking events, wiping out cities and changing the face of the game; in-game events retail games could never dream of attempting might be your average Saturday night in an open source Ryzom.”

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. :) 

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?”

In an effort to do even less work, on alternating weeks I’m going to be doing something a little different with my MMOG Nation column at GameSetWatch. Namely, I’m going to be calling out MMOG bloggers, pointing out the best stuff they’ve done, and putting them to my really tough softball questions. Fear, for you too may be asked things like “What is your favorite MMOG?” and “Why did you start blogging?”

Tuesday saw the posting of my piece on AFK Gamer. Foton was very nice in playing along, many thanks again to you sir. Not only was it fun reading through his archives and ‘interviewing’ him, but he offhandedly revealed a secret subsite to AFK Gamer that had me reading for hours and hours this past week. Did you know that bastard had a whole series on SWG? Yes! He’s not the only one that’s Grumpy! :)

Anyway, from the GSW post:

Michael: What would you say is your proudest moment from a Massive game? The one youll be telling the grandkids about.
Foton: Well I’d have to clean up the language for the grandkids. I guess there’d be a bunch of them, all involving game accomplishments that i didn’t think we could do or took for-f’ing-ever. The bard epic in EQ took me forever, was my 2nd main. First nefarian kill in WoW, first time other SWG players complained about my pvp guild on the forums. The EQ bard epic was the first time i swore in a good way in EQ. That’s probably my favorite. I felt good about that for days. Now of course, I realize it would have been better to cure cancer or write a Pulitzer novel, but hell, it was THE BARD EPIC.