The MMO Virus: Blogging

If you came here looking for some more pictures of me falling to my death, I suggest you go read some old posts. I don't blame you for wanting to cackle in glee as I showcase my agility at ramming my skull into the earth. That tendency of mine will hopefully end before I make it over to Thousand Needles. Though I do have something evil in mind to foil the next suicide attempt by going into engineering and picking up a parachute cloak.

Brief nerd info: Parachute comes from both a French word with a Latin prefix. Para meaning "counter" and chute meaning "fall".

/RemoveTangent

What I wanted to talk about today is the "art" of blogging or having a website in general. I feel like a virus.
Let me go through this analogy with you. People make blogs to be heard, to tell others their opinions about whatever subject that particular blog focuses on. Success or survival of a blog is to continue to grow in terms of viewers, and to continue that growth until it reaches critical mass. Like a virus, I want my website to spread everywhere, to "infect" people into becoming non-readers into...well readers.

Of course to be a successful "virus" you have to be different than all the other viruses out there, or you'll be eradicated. There are so many more analogies you can throw in here, the electronic "survival of the fittest" so to speak when it comes to having a successful webpage. I'm not claiming my website is a success story however.

I'm still infecting people.

I would love to look back at this page a year from now and say " Wow, look at my evil empire."

The "infection" is the greatest part of the success of a webpage. How quickly you spread the word about your website, how well you keep reader's interests, and by doing so well your current readers cannot help but talk about you to non-readers. Without one of these you won't do too much outside of a few personal friends visiting your site.

Without all three you're doomed to mediocrity.

Of course I have a heavy dose of ignorance when it comes to those three key elements. I'm still fresh, young, naive, and insane so instead of yelling across the globe with a great thunderclap " Here I am, read my stuff cause I think I'm spiffy!" I do a small cough to get your attention and mutter something about pie.(That probably would get my attention rather quickly if that happened..)

I bet you're wondering why I'm rambling on so. This epiphany came to me while performing my customer service duties for my day job. And being the nerd that I am, the whole similarity between trying to build a successful webpage/blog and a virus stuck me as somewhat insightful.
So with that in mind I wanted to talk about it as I happen to have such a webpage that is still in it's growing pains.

Hmm..

I guess my goal is to go from being a small cold to being a world wide epidemic that causes mass hysteria and panic. Much like the Scourge in World of Warcraft.(Ha! It's MMO related now!) So eventually I hope to have legions of people all chanting..

"For Danshir.." in guttural zombie speech, and I frankly don't think that is too much to ask. Especially since the Zombie Revolution will be coming along any day now...

An MMO Experience: Stab?

Stabbing a tree in the face..I'm a genius

First off let me explain. I tried playing a priest, I truly did. Yet my eye started to twitch. Maybe it was dealing with people all day on the phone that made the urge to start stabbing people, or maybe the fact I can't escape the class that I first stuck with back when World of Warcraft was first released.

I made a rogue.(Not a rouge, for the love of Zeus people...)

I think part of the blame lies with the "Craft of War:Blind" video. As nerdy as it may sound I really wanted to remake my old combat spec'ed rogue after watching that. So I quickly moved what little I had from my priest to my rogue and began to play. The transformation was to me phenomenal. I had mentioned that I dislike the lower levels of World of Warcraft, which is almost polar opposite of how most people view it. The reason that I had such distaste for the lower level content is simply the lack of abilities/spells one has access too. Well one reason.

It feels as if each class is basically the same at this particular point in the game. However what makes this so unique is I didn't feel that way playing the rogue. Perhaps it was the speed of the combat as I eviscerated my foes with my dagger.(Yuck. I hate daggers so bloody much..) So in essence I had an enjoyable experience playing WoW tonight. There are a few note worthy events I shall share against my better judgement.

I'll make it this time!

I decided I would try once more prove I was a paragon of jumping into a large body of water. Yet my fate was yet again sealed upon pressing my space bar..

*Sigh*

While you enjoy my personal humiliation(again) I did notice a few slight changes in World of Warcraft that I had missed previously. One was the improvement upon the Mining profession. I don't know when this change took effect, but instead of having to flail away several times to get all those precious ores, you get it all in one "hit". It was as if *gasp* Blizzard wasn't trying to waste my time with menial tasks! The next thing I noticed was another Blood Elf racial ability, magic resistance. Instead of just giving resistance to all schools of magic as it did previously when I played, it now increases the chance of spells missing you by 2%. A neat change, but nothing special.

However not all was fine and dandy in Azeroth...

Yeah..Subscription MMO players are ..uhh..mature

I had done probably the one thing that would make me desperately want to log off and never play again. I had ventured into a capital city. Immediately I was swarmed with mindless stupidity of Chuck Norris jokes, racism, and the "Insert the word anal in conjunction with a random ability/spell". Now correct me if I'm wrong, but these people are the ones that complain that the MT/F2P MMOs player populations are too "immature"?

So I threw an axe, and it stuck...in a ghost...wait..

That makes as much sense as the above picture. While there certainly are more players that are younger than the players in subscription MMOs, I would hazard a guess that the maturity level isn't that much different. In fact I would place my bet that non-subscription MMOs place higher.

But hey, that's just my opinion.

I think tomorrow I'm going to play Wizard101 as well as see if there are any updates about Spellborn. I've really wanted to try that out yet sadly someone is procrastinating about the US release. Then again, if I wanted to be truly honest, there are a TON of MMOs coming out that I want to play. JumpGate, DC Universe, The Agency, Spellborn, Aion...

The list could go on.

Hopefully we can see a bit more variety to the MMO genre beside the menagerie of World of Warcraft clones in 2009.

I shall close by re-posting the video "Craft of War:Blind" because it deserves to be viewed...twice. Also we got a new header! Yay!


The Craft of War: BLIND from percula on Vimeo.

MMO "Love" Interview & Twitter

I love my strange titles. Yet I may be going over the edge with each passing day. This may of course have something to do with my new "day" job being in full effect to the point where I am taking calls from people all over the United States. Since I was doing this, I sadly missed hearing my brand new President give his speech.

I'm not very political generally, but I really wanted to hear him speak. Thankfully finding this image on Diary of an (Ex?) WoW Addict cheered me up until I can hear a recording of it later.

This is the most epic thing ever.

So a few little updates to throw up on here. One is my very first interview is completed. The interview between myself and Eskil Steenberg, creator of the indie MMO project "Love", is now readable at NegativeGamer. If you're wondering why am I only posting the actual interview over there and not here at The MMO Experience? There are several reasons. While the actual so called "journalism" done by me is over there, I wanted to give my opinion on the whole matter here.

After talking to Eskil about his game "Love", I was kinda disheartened. Not about his game, but about his mindset and attitude toward "selling" his idea. He doesn't seem at all interested in what the world thinks about his game, nor about getting word out about it. While I can applaud someone being focused upon the creation of a project then trying to hunt down potential customers for an unfinished project, I can't help but wonder if no matter how great a game "Love" may be if it won't ever get that initial boost to give it ..well..

Life.

I've already heard a swarm of comments on MMO forums stating that the game looks like crap. I disagree with this statement utterly because I realize that both...

A: It's in pre-alpha stages.

and

B: It's an eccentric game that has a unique art style that ISN'T trying to be just like other, more world dominating MMOs.

Now while both I and others realize that, the majority of MMO players do not. These players that use forums and those that own blogs will give out their opinion, just as I am right at this moment. The "Word of Mouth" virus will spread like wildfire, and instantly a large portion of potential fans/customers are gone. Perhaps I'm over analyzing this, perhaps I shouldn't even bother being worried.

But I want to see "Love" succeed, even though I have nothing to do with the project except wanting to play it when it's released. Yet it seems several doors are shut about that. With no "free" trial of the game and the subscription fee possibly being more than your standard MMO I twitch, as if struck a blow. A developer that doesn't seem to want to make the game more accessible just slightly shuts me off, despite me liking Eskil Steenberg.

Time will tell.

On a side note, you can now find me on that horribly named program Twitter! If you want to become my personal stalker you may at anytime by following me at Danshir's Twitter.(Yes, That sounds horribly wrong...go ahead and laugh..do it...)

One more thing before I go. My wife has made a prediction that I will soon quit my Priest and return to some "random dps class, because You love doing damage..". I honestly hate to say that she may be correct as I start to yearn to play something that makes things go boom.

Maybe a mage? A tanking melee mage...yes that would do nicely.