Some reading on Blizzard's newest bright idea...

[korinna]

wow_ladies did a fantastic job of covering Blizzard's decision to force its forum posters to use their real name. See here and here. A lot of excellent links have been compiled, particularly in the second post, so if you have any interest in the issue (which, in general, concerns online anonymity and privacy concerns - so this is important even if you don't

Comments

[korinna]

I'm still so mad. >(

Because I need to talk about something happy, I'm really excited for SW:TOR because I got seluecus to agree to try it out with me (he's not much of a video gamer and he's also scared of me yelling at him about pixels, so this is a big deal). I haven't been able to play an MMO with actual friends/partners for a couple years now, so I'm really looking forward to it. I know some people have been talking about it as essentially being a reskinned WoW with not as good graphics, but umm, w/e. It won't make me use my real name, at least.

[lisaquestions]

I'm really looking forward to TOR. What I've seen doesn't feel to me like reskinned WoW, and I think that people are overstating that a bit on the basis of implementing the healer/tank/dps triad.

But if it is a reskinned WoW? I don't care, I had fun playing WoW. :)

[seluecus]

I'm kinda looking forward to TOR too. It looks decent to me (better graphics than WoW, I thought) and even though I generally have no interest in MMOs and have never actually bothered to play one, trying it out with ploratrix should be fun. Even though (as she mentioned) I anticipate many moments of her going "What are you doing?", "No, no - shoot it! Shoot it now!!!" and "Why are you so STUPID?!" It'll be an adventure :p

[lisaquestions]

Hahaha!

Yeah, I agree that TOR looks better than WoW, graphically. The screenshots I've seen show better textures in general. I know WoW's deliberately designed to run on lower-end systems, though, and so's TOR, so I don't really begrudge either of them. :)

I'm sure TOR will be great fun for both of you, esp. if you dig Star Wars. :)

[the_siobhan]

I'm a recent addict when it comes to MMOs - I've only played Warhammer and Aion so far. I'm looking forward to the science fiction enviornment as a chance to explore something a little different.

[paeroka]

You could try Global Agenda to get a feeling for a science fiction "MMO". It's not really an MMO but it has a free trial and to get the full experience, you only need to buy the box. It doesn't have a monthly fee anymore (like Guild Wars).

I've only tested it for a short bit so far. But it was nice and well, very science fictionish. And as testing it doesn't cost anything, I thought I'd suggest it. ;)

[the_siobhan]

Cool thanks for the recommendation. I'll try it out.

[korinna]

Such libel. I'm a very sweet person. :(

[korinna]

That's what I thought. The combat dynamics of WoW really work well, so why not? I hope TOR does something to make sure we don't have to crunch numbers too much, because I hate min/maxing in WoW, but even if they don't I can deal.

[lisaquestions]

I think devs that try to get around number crunching have their work cut out for them. Even if the devs try to hide the numbers, the players will find them.

As long as they stick to mechanics like they have, some degree of it is almost inevitable. Hopefully it won't be as complex as WoW can be. I hated going to EJ or whatever to see if new gear was an upgrade or a sidegrade, or even a downgrade despite being higher ilvl.

[korinna]

Yeah, very true.

Gearing up in WotLK confuses me so much. I feel that in vanilla and BC it was possible to accurately judge whether or not something was better without consulting outside sources, but not so much anymore.

[lisaquestions]

I had to make preemptive gear lists based on EJ posts in order to avoid impulsively rolling on a drop just because it had a particular stat I wanted more of.

Cataclysm's simplifying everything, which is probably a good thing, but lot of good that'll do me when I refuse to play their game.