Big stuff today on Massively from me. My fingers hurt.

• Not technically from today, but instead earlier this week, a fun retrospective on the two most recent Guild Wars boxes.
• Catching up with Warhammer. I sat in on another one of those EA Mythic conference calls, which you may recall from here on the site. Made me a little sad not to be putting it up here. Times they are a changin’, huh?
• Lots of AoC stuff on the site today, as the NDA dropped for press folks. I put in a sort of thousand-foot view on the game, and a heaping pile of videos and screenshots.
• It’s also a Thursday, so Massively Speaking #3 went up. Yay for consistency! #5 or bust!

Massively Speaking Episode 2 runs down news and features from Massively.com for the week of April 14th-20th. Shawn and Michael are joined by blogging regulars Akela Talamasca and Jonathan Northwood to talk about the next LOTRO Book, the Epic Villain Archetype video, and (of course) Age of Conan!

Get the podcast:
[RSS] Add the Massively Speaking Podcast feed to your RSS aggregator.
[Digg] Like the show? Digg it.
[MP3] Download the MP3 directly.

So today was a big day for me, in a good way.

• The first Massively Speaking podcast went up on the website. No RSS feed or iTunes yet, but there will be. Go check it out, I think it went really well for a first offering. Yes, I still have a podcast here. Expect to hear from that feed again soon.
• We had an amazing day in general on the site. A video exclusive, a couple of great features; Cameron continues to rock so hard it hurts. I was generally very proud to be working at Massively today.
• I won not one, not two, but three Alterac Valley rounds. Warsong Gulch is this weekend, and I’m looking forward to it. Horde pwns our battlegroup in the bracket Hackworth is in right now.
• Today was also my last day at Slashdot.org. It’s like, for real now. My Facebook page says so and everything. You know it’s serious.  Since I’m not going to have a lot of opportunities to talk about my time with the site, I’ll say this: Working at Slashdot was a singular experience. I’m really glad I had the opportunity to do it. I’m thankful to Rob Malda and the other editors for giving me the chance to do it. I feel lucky that I can say I participated in a site that’s - kinda - a part of Internet history.
• Final Score: 12761 posts. That’s about 11 a day over the course of three years.

Hope your day was good too, blog readers.

If you’re reading me, I’m hopeful that you’re familiar with the fantastic work of Cameron Sorden. His Random Battle blog is a constant source of thought-provoking commentary on Massive games. I don’t always agree with what he has to say, but Cameron always has a really great point to get across.

Given how much I appreciate his writing, I’m positively ecstatic to relate that he’s writing at a new website. Where, you ask? How about Massively?

Cameron’s first blog post went up today, touching on the tutorial experience in the MMO genre.

There’s no game tutorial that comes in, holds your hand, and says, “Hey, pal. You’re going to need to use frost trap effectively in the end game. Let’s practice it a little until you get the hang of it.” Most MMOGs just teach you the bare-bones basics of the game (like running, moving, and auto-attack) before they abandon you to the wild. You’re expected to figure out the rest on your own, and eventually to hit up sites like Elitist Jerks or the World of Warcraft class forums to make sure that you’re being all that you can be. Is this necessarily the best way to do things, though?

If you like Cam’s MMO commentary, make sure to subscribe to Massively. Cameron’s almost-daily posts on the topic are now going to be hosted at the site, providing even more awesomesauce to the kettle of cool we’re stewing over there.

Just in case you don’t listen to the podcast: I’m going to be moving on from Slashdot pretty soon.

My goal of being a freelance games writer is something that - I feel - I’m within reach of realizing. So I’m jumping, with my last day on the site slated for April 17th. After that I’ll be purely focusing on Massively and other freelance projects.

Within the next few months you’re going to be seeing my name in some new places, including (shock) print mags. I’m really excited by the possibilities this represents. I’m hopeful it will mean a higher quality of writing everywhere I have the fortune to set word to electron.

What does this mean for MMOG Nation? MN is now officially a part of my professional career. As such, you can expect a level of dedication to posting that previously I’ve been more lax about. Content may not always be incredibly gripping, of course. I especially can’t promise that on weekends, when posts might tend towards the more casual (ala the Friday Film posts).

That said, at the end of the month you should be able to look back and see at least one post every day. That’s my new commitment to the site and my writing. Wish me luck. :)

I’ve been really enjoying writing on MV lately. And why not?

Here’s some great Star Wars Galaxies stuff from the last week or so:

• SWG’s producer talks Chapter 9 testing/hints at Chapter 10
• Star Wars Galaxies soon to feature new pvp badge collection
• Getting the colors right on Star Wars Galaxies’ instruments
• Star Wars Galaxies live update 2 improves Entertainers, Medics

I’m also especially proud of this: a video and screenshot-filled feature all about the FFXI expansion (that, yes, came out last winter.) I’ve actually changed my site banner in honor of it, and slipped a quick fifteen second video that didn’t make it into the article below the cut. I spent a long time putting that together.

Read more

I want to give a big shout-out and congratulations to Shawn Schuster (of GuildCast, TabulaCast, and OMGRL) and Tipa of the West Karana blog. They applied to Massively in the recent round we put out there, and foolishly agreed when we decided to hire them! Mwahahaha.

So! If you enjoy the work of these two esteemed members of the mmogblogosphere, head over to Massively every once in a while to check them out. Now with even more gaming know-how!