As happens every week, prepare yourself for video and six scenic screenshots from my past week of MMO play. This week I’ve got a pair of videos, each with a tale associated with it.

The first (a regrettably silent film), shows myself and the Shortiez taking on the last threat in the long quest chain in Permafrost known as the ‘Statue Quests‘. Each one is obtained by clicking on a statue in this great room with a table and huge horn in the center. We did the last one this past week, ending with The Horn Sounds. Unfortunately we had to do it four times over because killing the four giants that spawn only counts for one person as quest completion. Lame. Sauce.

The other video is kind of a weird one. I meant to take a screenshot during an Arathi Basin match, and hit the video capture button instead. What I got is a sort of madcap caper flick as I try to defend a flag, get assaulted by a Paladin while futzing with my UI, and basically witness the end of the match (the 1800 resource howl). It’s actually pretty funny … check it out.

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Or: Why I can’t wait to play Valve’s first MMO.

I was sitting in my hotel in San Diego earlier this year, pondering a blog post and the day’s events. The sun was on the horizon and to keep the back of my mind occupied I popped on the television. Watching cable TV is a rare treat for me. Primarily I watch specific TV shows via iTunes or Netflix, so channel surfing is really only something I do for the 30 minutes or so I’m on the elliptical at the gym.

Animal Planet, Discovery, and other channels sometimes run shows on zookeeping or zoo design, and I just can’t get enough of that stuff. What can I say, I like animals and how stuff gets put together? In any case, that San Diego evening I entertained myself by occasionally looking up to see a hippo being fed or a bear cave being cleaned.

The thing of it is, in some ways those zoo animals have it better off than your average MMO player. I’m not just talking about free food and no rent - I’m talking about enrichment activities.

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Far be it for me to poke fun at SOE (heh), but I wanted to offer up my two cents about something that’s been bugging me for a while. The next expansion for EQ2 is, I’m sure, already well along in development. The last one was great, and I’m really looking forward to participating in that content. I do have a criticism, though, and I’m hopeful that the next big EQ2 content drop can avoid the mistakes of the past.

Rise of Kunark’s box is (to put it succinctly) not very good. I don’t mean it looks bad - it’s a fine looking box and all that. But the marketing folks on this particular project mashed together a bunch of stuff that’s downright confusing. It makes me very much question what the intent of the box was, and (because I’m that kind of guy) that makes me want to understand the intent of what I’m seeing. So today I have a dissection of the Rise of Kunark box … starting with that handsome Dark Elf gent on the cover.

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Yeah, yeah, lore is fluff. But a lot of people (myself included, actually) find WoW’s backstory kind of interesting.  I certainly agree with David’ assessment over at Timesink - WoW has more compelling lore than EQ2 as an example.

I am fully aware that a lot of this is completely subjective, and people’s opinions will vary. I love EverQuest II, it’s a great game, but when compared to WoW, EQII does not feel like a “world” as oppsed to a bunch of loosely connected zones. I’m not criticizing EQII’s use of zoning, that never really bothered me, rather, EQII’s zones feel like zones. They feel like arbitrary areas created to adventure in with no connection or relation to any other parts, nor do they evoke any sense of historical importance.

I try to unravel the complicated threads of the Alliance racial backstories in my weekly WoW Exposed column for GameSetWatch.

While sci-fi’s played-out tropes have been rehashed and thinned down somewhat in recent years, we haven’t had a truly great genre shake-up for fantasy fans. The result is that even World of Warcraft, as successful and entertaining as it is, bogs down with an endless amount of backstory and genre cliches. Despite that, the lore of Warcraft is interesting stuff. There are a lot of compelling elements, individual tales that you can follow along through the thousands of years of sketched out storyline.

If you ignore the clap-trap about who specifically did what when or the endless back-and-forth between all-powerful entities, there are interesting characters and situations to focus on. Consider this the first in an ongoing series of articles looking at the backstory of Warcraft, with an eye towards making the material as approachable as possible.

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Sooooo I’ve been enjoying FRAPS quite a bit of late. My Flickr account has been steadily getting more interesting in the last few weeks as a result. I’ve decided to start doing some more video just for kicks, (I did pay for the full version after all) and now my YouTube account is starting to feel some love as well. I certainly play MMOs enough to have one bloody interesting thing to show you each week and thus starts my attempt at a regular post: the Friday Film.

Notice: The Friday film is intended to be a brief glimpse into my gameplay over the past week. It is not intended to amuse, frighten, or inform anyone but myself. By watching the video you indemnify me from any comments along the lines of “Boring”, “Teh Suxx0r”, or “L2P”.

Today you get two videos. One’s an ancient file I’ve been keeping around for years now: video of my first character dinging 60. Good old Grodin. The other video is the actual clip from this week, of the Shortiez EQ2 group battling a pack of wolves in Permafrost. My wife Katie (Caimia) dings 53 during the course of the battle.

Enjoy. Have fun. Tolerate, citizen.

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After the harshness of Everfrost and the giant citadel, the green lushness of the Lesser Faydark was a great big relief. Especially since, at least for my wife and I, Everfrost bore far too close a resemblance to the view out the window. Early February was a cold, terrible month in Wisconsin. The chance to travel to a warm, green place - if even virtually - was fantastic. The Shortiez group was there, we saw … and we did a good number on the local plant and fairy life. We also, as a result of Tipa’s awesome assistance, are now officially a guild!

Read on for a discussion of Faydark’s secrets and the process of tagging a surly bunch of gnomes.
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I do a lot of nitpicking on games, but every once in a while I think it’s worth pointing out a really standout good bit. I’ve previously talked about my love for game holidays, for good quest breadcrumbing, and even for some of the design components of D&D Online. Something I’ve been thinking about a lot recently is movement. Namely, avatar movement. It’s something that’s been impossible for me to ignore since Damion’s Zen of Design talk last year at AGDC; his comment that ‘getting jumping wrong’ is a fundamental problem really stuck with me.I want to call out a fantastic bit of movement and race design, with the Arasai race in EverQuest 2 acting as my paragon of awesome. Read on for why the little winged terrors are so fantastic - with video footage!
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