It’s ok to hate bad PvP, but have you played good PvP?

What if Warhammer PvP is something PvE players do end up liking? I mean, if EQ PvP is your only example of PvP, I don’t blame you for hating PvP. Same goes for WoW PvP. Two PvE games that tried to add PvP as an extra, and in turn made a lot of people really hate PvP.

What if a lot of those ‘PvE only’ players see what decent PvP is like in WAR, and actually enjoy it? Word spreads to their PvE only buddies, and down the snowball rolls.

The major problem with the perception of PvP in MMO’s is that the biggest games had really, really awful PvP, and in turn PvP-focused MMOs were themselves bad games. EQ1 and WoW are the two big PvE games, and both had horrid PvP systems tacked on to PvE games. Shadowbane and Fury were both ‘PvP focused’, yet both were crippled by numerous issues not at all related to PvP. A bad MMO is a bad MMO, regardless if its a PvP or PvE game. Same goes for a good MMO. Even PvP diehards have likely played WoW simply because it’s a good MMO.

What is possibly unique about Warhammer Online is that, from all accounts so far, it’s a good MMO and it’s PvP focused. That’s never happened in MMO land on a mass market scale. The good news is WAR is looking very solid, the bad news is it has the ‘PvP’ stigma to overcome. The difference between 500k subscribers and 5 million might come down to convincing those PvE-only ‘carebears’ that PvP done correctly is a great way to game.

End-game content is not the ONLY content.

Tobold, MMOCrunch and Random Battle are three blogs which have recently talked about solo vs group play in an MMO, and everyone brings some good points to the table. One major issue during the leveling process is that far too often, grouping actually slows progress down, and hence players solo instead.

The quick fix to this would be to make grouping more rewarding than soloing, while not going as far as EQ1 with forced groups. Players avoid groups in WoW because they know they can accomplish more solo, and hit the level cap faster.

What stuck me however is not the group vs solo aspect, but the whole ‘rush to cap’ notion. Why do we just assume everyone want to hit the level cap as fast as possible?

The easy answer is, ‘Blizzard said so’. It’s no secret the ‘good’ stuff in WoW is at the level cap, at least according to Blizzard, which is in sharp contrast to what most people really like about WoW; the questing and fast paced progression.

Before WoW (yes, people played MMO’s before WoW), rushing head first to the level cap was not how most people played. No one rushed to 7x GM in UO. You blatantly could not rush to cap in EQ due to how long that whole process use to be. In Asheron’s Call, after a certain point, level gains were insignificant due to diminishing returns. DAoC had plenty of PvP pre-cap. The list goes on.

Yet today, in WoW/LoTRO/AoC (and I’m sure others), you have the ‘leveling game’ and the ‘end game’, and the two are usually night and day. Will that be the case with Warhammer Online as well? The reason I ask is because for months now, we have been reading about all these great Public Quests and PvP areas, which are zone/level specific. What if I really love doing a certain Public Quest, or enjoy how PvP works at a certain level? Will I still need to rush and hit cap, just so I can join the ‘official’ endgame of city sieges?

Unlike questing, PvP is almost endless content, and since WAR is built around PvP, who is to say people won’t slow down and enjoy each tier of PvP, instead of always looking at their XP bar and grinding out another level. Perhaps the whole ‘group vs solo’ issue will be a non-factor, as players instead focus on their current tier and battling the enemy, enjoying what is currently in front of them, instead of rushing towards the end-game carrot. One can hope, right?

Not the hardest shoes to fill…

If you’re Horde, defending your Relief Hut, and make us spend 10-15 seconds trying to kill you, the rest of your team will be able to support and heal you. And if you do die, you’ll rez at the Relief Hut, fully healed.

If you’re Horde, defending your Relief Hut, and you Sprint away, you won’t do any damage to us - you’re as good as dead - and we’ll start killing your team’s healers. What sounds more tactically advantageous to you?

As Megs preaches: It’s not the Killing Blows that wins matches, it’s the implementation of sound strategy that does. In this battleground, that rogue should have stayed in place and allowed us try to kill him as many times as possible. If we’re killing him, we wouldn’t be nuking the Horde’s healers, which is our favorite thing to do.

The above is from BigRedKitty, a WoW hunter blog which I read even though I quit WoW a while back. Always quality writing with style over there, check it out.

The reason I picked up on that quote should be fairly obvious though. How f’ed up is WoW PvP? I know I’m not breaking any new ground here, but it’s this type of reminder that just so blatantly make WoW PvP look so bad, and leaves a gap a mile wide for Warhammer to fill. Sure taking on WoW as a whole is a tough job, but providing even semi-reasonable PvP should be a cakewalk compared to this.

The carebear and the ganker, best friends forever.

In somewhat of a continuation from yesterday’s post, and with the idea sparked after reading MBP’s post here, today’s topic aims to examine why so many PvE ‘carebears’ play PvP-focused MMOs, using EVE Online as the example. Not since Ultima Online has a mass market MMO had as harsh a death penalty as EVE Online has, nor has the PvP been less consensual, as literally you could lose your ship at any moment. And yet with exactly that environment, why do some many PvE players exist in what on the surface looks like a hardcore PvP game?

To me it comes down to something rather simple, PvE players need PvP players, even if those very PvP players make life more difficult for them at times. Without the PvP players blowing each other up, making travel dangerous, limiting access to certain areas, and raising the demand of PvP-focused items, EVE’s economy would spiral into WoW territory, where a single mod does all the work for you, and were gold has lost 99% of its value. While it’s impossible to pinpoint the exact percentage of PvP players compared to PvE players in EVE, it’s a safe bet to say there are more ‘carebears’ than PvPers. Something that on the surface is rather surprising in a game that’s almost sole ‘end-game’ is massive PvP. But it goes deeper than just maintaining an interesting economy.

Crafting in most MMOs is a sideshow at best, and complete trash on average, yet in EVE it’s the basis for countless Corporations (guilds), and numerous pilots are almost exclusively focused on crafting. Not just one or two months of grinding out a crafting profession, I’m talking years of playing a character who does nothing but crafting-related activities. And the real kicker? Some of the most powerful individuals in EVE are crafters and other pure ‘carebear’ pilots, as their focus on wealth allows them to hire the best mercenaries to deal with any ‘issues’ that might arise, or makes them highly sought after by PvP-minded Corps/Pilots in need of supplies or production.

How many PvE players dream of becoming a market mogul, feared by killers due to the trading empire they have built from the ground up? PvP goes beyond just who does the most damage swinging a sword, yet in too many MMO’s that’s exactly the extent of it. In a game like EVE, the ‘carebears’ also engage in PvP, it’s just behind the scenes. They do battle with buy orders, finding rare spots to mine ore before someone else does, and undercutting the competition to force them out of your trading area. Rather than just mass selling all your drops to some NPC, the pilots in EVE must find the best possible place to sell their items, and those conditions are 100% player controlled. There are no NPC’s who stand around and accept all the useless junk you want to dump on them for some quick profit.

There are countless other factors that play into the equation, but the basis remains the same; in order to maintain a healthy, vibrant virtual world (not a hop on, go for an on-rails ride), you need to empower both the PvPer and the ‘carebear’. The smartest, most dedicated players should rise to the top, regardless if they focus on mining or ganking. Ignore one, and soon both sides suffer.

Asshat or PvPer: Which will Warhammer Online have?

I read a recent post from MMOG Nation via MMOWTF today that got me thinking, or rather re-visiting an idea. The post pointed out the differences in PvP mentality going from a PvP server to a PvE one in WoW, with the perhaps surprising result that ganking and asshats were far more common on the PvE server than the PvP one. I say ‘perhaps’ because for longtime PvP fans, this is not that surprising.

Like the rest of the internet, the more anonymous and unaccountable you can be, the further some people are driven into asshat mode. The reason people played nice for the most part in EQ1 was because reputation got around quick, and if you acted like an ass, soon the server would know and you would be blackballed. In Asheron’s Call (Darktide at least) reputation was everything, since at any point anyone could gank you. Instead of outright chaos however, the players on DT generally followed guild rules and limited ganking to marked targets. In Dark Age of Camelot, at the highest RvR level, being respected by your realm meant being a team player, someone who could be relied on. Those who refused to follow orders or play as a team soon found themselves being rejected from group runs and the best parts of RvR.

On a much smaller scale, being a total dick on a PvP server in WoW might make you enough enemies to hamper your gameplay. Perhaps players will remember your name, and go out of their way to kill you whenever you are spotted. It’s not a huge penalty, certainly not anything close to what older games had, but perhaps enough to deter some of the otherwise would-be asshats. On a PvE server, you can be a dick all you want, and with one magic /pvp command, you gain total immunity. It’s not surprising then that those who aim to be dicks, rather than actually enjoying a PvP fight, pick a PvE server.

Moving away from WoW, this raises an interesting question for Warhammer Online. Will we see more of the WoW PvE-server style players, or more of the AC/DAoC style of name recognition and respect? Clearly WAR is a PvP focused game, with the high-end being very group/guild focused. That would lead me to believe players will be less likely to enter asshat mode, with the risk of being shunned by their realm during PQs, RvR skirmishes, and most importantly city raids. On the other hand, EVE aside, most MMO games today do little to limit or punish the bad apples, and who is to say WAR’s PvP focus will be enough to weed them out?

Graphics don’t age like wine.

Plenty of people have already broken down every single frame and image of Diablo3, so I won’t go into it here save for two concerns:

1)      It looks good (but not Crysis amazing) now, but given that it won’t be released for a good bit, will it still look good at release?

2)      Is it not a bit too early to start hyping a game so far from release, especially when you have StarCraft2 and a WoW expansion still unreleased?

Now that said, I’m still very much looking forward to 2010 and D3. I’m glad they kept the camera angle the same, and the basic gameplay (mass murder) similar as well. No need to reinvent the wheel, a fresh coat of Blizzard paint will do.

It’s been a slow week in LoTRO land for Aria and I, just not much time to play. We are approaching level 30, and currently questing in the North Downs, a zone I overall like. We still need to finish the final part of book 2, as well as getting into a GA group at some point. Overall though, our second time in LoTRO is another very enjoyable ride.

As for EVE, I actually put in some time and got stuff in order. I picked up about 20 or so new skill books from the Dresi academy for my combat pilot, and started training them up. Knowing I will need good drone support if I intend to solo level 4 missions in my Rohk, that’s become a new training goal. I still need to finish up a few skills in order to use tech II large hybrid guns, but that goal is not far off. Not wanting to rush in too fast, I took on a few level 3 missions using the Rohk, but it was more overkill than I remembered it being. Guess an extra 8-9 million skill points help. Wanting to focus on the combat pilot, my miner is going to be reduced to mission junk recycler, as well as mass producer of ammo. I figure once I start knocking out level 4 missions, the ISK fill flow and I’ll finally be able to afford that Hulk the miner still needs. Perhaps once he has that, I might go on an asteroid murder spree and get back into the production game.

Oh, and I am currently looking for a Corp for my combat pilot. 15 million skills, looking to run level 4 missions and also do some Faction Warfare. I play casually, so won’t be able to make any required fleet ops or anything, but could work my schedule to make an event or two. I would prefer a Corp near the Kador region, but if someone has transportation, I would be willing to relocate. Anyone got anything?

Breaking down MMO burnout, and ways to avoid it.

Rick over at /random expressed concern that his longtime guild may not be as hyped for WAR as he is, and that their time together in the game may be rather limited due to general MMO veteran burnout, a legitimate concern for anyone hoping to find the next ‘it’ game to play with friends.

As someone with a great deal of MMO experience, having played Ultima Online heavily at release and MMO gaming ever since, Rick’s post got me thinking about the general idea of MMO burnout. On a somewhat recent podcast, Michael Zenke expressed his jealousy for anyone able to enjoy one MMO for great lengths of time, as he himself was unable to focus on any one game for long. This brings up the question, does the appeal of MMO gaming have a limited shelf life? Do we all reach a point where we are no longer entertained by ‘kill x’ quests, grinding another level, or killing a mob in the hopes it drops the item we desire? How many times can you hit max level in an MMO before all you see is the same formula with a few twists, instead of the rush to explore a new world and see what is around the next corner ?

I think part of what contributes to the burnout is that initially, an MMO is a very different beast than all other games, especially during the initial ‘big three’ era, before Xbox live and all computer games having an online component made multiplayer fairly common. Just the fact that you logged into a world populated by thousands of other real players was new and exciting. Seeing another real player, and not an NPC, run by you for the first time was special, as was the first time you got together with other players to tackle some common task. The very basics of MMO gaming are what hook us initially, but those same hooks exist in all MMOs, and are nothing new the 3^rd or 4th time around. Your first group experience in MMO 4 is much different than it was in MMO 1. In MMO 4, you know what to expect, you know exactly why you are in the group, and worst still, you know that joining a PUG could result in disaster; disaster you no longer have patience for. What you and everyone else could once laugh about now generally results in people leaving the group at best and a massive flame fest at worst.

UO was able to get away with a LOT of issue in part because for 99% of the players, just being online was a source of newness and entertainment. When Warhammer Online goes live, what percentage of the players will view just connecting to a server and being in a virtual world as entertainment? It certainly won’t be 99%, or 50%, but will it even be 10%? Regardless of the actual number, it won’t be many, and as a result, WAR and all other future MMOs need to deliver compelling gameplay right out of the gate to satisfy the needs of a far more demanding MMO crowd. In addition, not only does that content need to be compelling day one, it also has to continue at a much more furious pace than in days past. We all want new surprises around every corner, and those corners better come at a far more rapid pace than before. MMO gamers today won’t be logging on to hit a practice dummy for hours in order to work up their sword skill high enough to kill field rats. They want awesome day one, day two, and expect that awesome to continue to deliver for months on end. In many ways, it’s an almost impossible task for today’s developers to satisfy the needs of veteran MMO gamers.

With all that said, is there any hope for all the old whiny bastards like Rick and I? Can any MMO today or in the future rekindle those types of feelings we had for our first MMO? Glass half full guy says yes, glass half empty guy is not so sure. On the one hand, playing with a great group of people in a solid environment will always be entertaining. Playing on a beer league softball team is just as fun today as playing baseball was in high school, even though the feeling of hitting your first homerun will never be eclipsed by another homerun in the future. The actual activity, while still fun, is greatly supplemented by the people you play with. In that regard, any solid MMO with good gameplay should be able to entertain us, as we hope WAR will. It won’t, however, bring the same rush you had during your first relic raid in DAoC, or the first time you tried to run away from a PK in UO. And perhaps our tolerance for the general MMO grind, something all MMO games feature in varying degrees, is a bit lower. To me, that just places an even greater importance on playing with quality people early and often, as without them, that burnout sets in hard and fast regardless of what MMO you are playing.

One year of blogging done, and what a year it has been!

It’s been a year already?

I initially started blogging for what I believe is the most common reason: to have a place to keep all my thoughts and ideas about gaming in one place. What originally started as just ‘something to do’ has slowly grown into a very enjoyable hobby and craft. Over the course of the last year, I’ve been rather heavily involved in the MMO blogosphere, be it commenting, linking, or podcasting. Through it all, I’ve had a great time and gained a huge amount of insight into not only MMO games, but my own approach to them as well. Not to mention all the great bloggers and podcasters I’ve gone back and forth with, something that would likely not have happened without the blog.

I figured the best (easiest?) way to break down my first year as a blogger was just to go over the great statistics that WordPress provides, and comment on anything I found interesting or surprising.

First up, the very top-level stuff.

Blog Stats

Total views: 104,123

Busiest day: 11,852 - Thursday, September 6, 2007

Posts: 253

Comments: 1,658

As I recently posted here, the blog hit 100k views not too long ago, a nice round number. I never gave traffic much thought when I started, but I must say I’m very happy hitting 100k in my first year.

The busiest day, way back in September, is the result of getting linked by the BBC tech page, a quote from a somewhat random post I made about WoW and the future expansion. That was an exciting day, especially since it came so early in this blog’s life. Sadly the retention rate from all that traffic was rather low, although it certainly helped. As the stats below will show, no other day/post has really come close to that huge, single hit boost from the BBC, although if the current traffic trend continues, it will happen eventually.

The total posts number, 253, is overall rather decent considering I generally don’t post on Saturday or Sunday. If my math is correct (odds are low), that means out of the remaining 261 days, I posted on average almost every single day. Clearly days with multiple posts help offset days I posted nothing, but even so, a near post-a-day average not counting the weekend is fine by me. Now to keep it up in year two!

The 1658 comments stat is what I think I’m most proud of, as to me it means people actually cared enough about what was posted here to say something about it. Comments are what really drive a blogger to continue and to stay active, and they are a great source of motivation, so thank you to everyone who has taken the time to write something. (yes, even you random troll)

Top Posts for all days ending 2008-06-25

The love and hate game, WoW style. - 16,875

Screen shot comparison. - 2,636

Looking in the mirror; the sickness that was WoW raiding - 1,918

EQ2, trial of the never-ending download. - 1,632

Throwing down the gauntlet, the great MMO challenge - 1,414

Ebolt anyone? - 1,230

Funcom to AoC players, GTFO! - 1,176

Can my toaster run AoC? - Concerned Walmart Shopper -1,143

Stuck in easy mode. - 1,059

Ghost town, population you. - 704

As mentioned above, the first post is the one linked by the BBC, and as you can see, it’s far and away the top post. The next post is somewhat interesting, in that the concept was rather simple, and it was also one of the few posts with pictures. Also of interest is that the post was about EQ2, a game that I overall spent a limited amount of time with. This trend continues in a few more examples, showing that the EQ2 community is very active, and that EQ2 itself drives a lot of MMO traffic. Top post three is one of my favorites, as it was a very personal retrospective look of my time in WoW, and in particular the endgame raiding grind. In addition to the post itself, a lot of really great comments have been left by others sharing their own experiences and methods of escaping that trap. I won’t go into detail about the rest, other than to say a few more recent posts have snuck into the top ten, and that my original post, ‘Ebolt anyone?’, is holding on strong despite originally getting very little traffic due to the blog being new. UO reminiscing still gets peoples attention, a clear sign that you never really forget your first MMO, as UO was for so many.

Referrers for all days ending 2008-06-25

news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/default - 11,015

news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/default - 3,159

wowinsider.com - 2,922

virginworlds.com/home.php - 1,831

google.com/reader/view - 1,288

tobolds.blogspot.com - 1,055

eq2-daily.com - 838

keenandgraev.com - 650

killtenrats.com - 499

crazykinux.com - 398

Again the BBC dominates the top spot, and even spot number two, despite that link being on the back page. WoWInsider, being the huge a site that it is, is not a very surprising number three, followed by the ever awesome VirginWorlds news feed. Tobold, the blog overlord himself, is not surprisingly the first blog on the list, along with Keen and Graev, KTR and the link-happy man himself, Crazy Kinux. Thank you to everyone who has linked me, it drives traffic, which leads to comments, which leads to happy blogging!

Search Terms for all days ending 2008-06-25

Syncaine - 334

vanguard trial - 312

hardcore casual - 267

eq2 - 259

wow progress - 219

hardcore - 195

warhammer podcast - 132

eq2 trial - 119

sotnw - 92

switch mmo - 77

shadowbane reset - 70

This list is a little surprising. Spots one and three are all about me, and you know, I’m kind of a big deal on Google (clearly kidding). The big surprise is spot number two, people looking for a Vanguard trial. How does that game NOT have a trial? Seriously, I’ve been looking to try Vanguard for a long time now, if just to see what all the fuss is about, and yet without a trial it’s never going to happen. It’s silly that SOE has not gotten around to this yet. Another random surprise is the amount of searches that lead people here about Sword of the New World (sotnw). I only briefly posted about the game, and generally concluded that while pretty, the game was an afk-grind with little point. Maybe that’s what people are looking for though, who knows…

Finally here are two charts (remember, people like pictures) showing overall traffic flow. On the monthly chart, you can clearly see the spike from the BBC link, followed by a return to the more normal, steady growth. Hopefully the trend continues, and one day that BBC spike won’t look quite as dominant.

The weekly chart shows that while monthly traffic might be fairly steady, week to week traffic is very sporadic. This is due no doubt to a combination of who linked me, what exactly I posted that week, and how active I was commenting on other blogs and generating hits from that. The one thing I have learned after a year of blogging is you can never really predict what will drive traffic. A well-crafted post (imo of course) may get little attention, while a quick post about something random will start a firestorm. The important thing to remember is to post about what YOU want to talk about, and not worry about posting the next ‘major hit’ blog post. If you write honestly and with passion, people will pick up on it and drop by.

To sum it all up, it’s been a crazy first year for me in regards to this blog. It’s been a huge learning experience, and hopefully I continue to improve and provide interesting reading for everyone. I’m very much looking forward to year two, especially since the ‘next big think’ in Warhammer will hit, and no doubt spur some good debate in our corner of the Internet. I can’t wait!

Thanks again to all the reader!

MMO history, that Bartle guy, and why WoW2 won’t blow your mind.

It seems we had a busy weekend in the MMO blog world, fueled by an interview with Richard Bartle done by Michael Zenke over at Massively. As with anything remotely interesting posted on the internet these days, the responses to the interview, and the multitude of blog posts related to it, range from the ‘you’re an idiot stfu’ to ‘exactly what I was thinking’.

The real headline grabbing line of the interview is the comment “I’ve already played Warhammer. It was called World of Warcraft“, which when taken out of context or misinterpreted is all the internet needs to jump on the nerd rage bandwagon. When clarified (Bartle was talking about the setting itself), he is actually only 50% correct. Originally WoW was indeed the Warhammer setting without the official license (they lost that at some point in development), but only until Blizzard started putting their unique spin on the world. The Warhammer IP is lacking such gems as pretty evil elves, noble aliens that are descendents of the super evil alien guys, and a world where everyone (aside from said super evil aliens) is a good guy, just misunderstood. Even the undead are good guy freedom fighters, yay! It might be a world, but outside of a magic arena, there is very little war being crafted.

Bastardized lore bitching aside, Bartle does bring up an interesting point to someone who has been in the MMO scene since Neverwinter Nights; MMOs really are fairly similar now. Think about it, when Ultima Online came out, it was totally new. So new that the term MMO was a few years off, and everyone was a damn noob just logging on and wandering around (and getting PK’ed). Then came EverQuest, and how many people looked at EQ and said ‘eh, it’s UO with elves, who cares’? Right, no one. What you did hear was ‘EQ is carebear land, gtfo newbie’. Which was accurate, EQ was carebear land compared to UO, but more importantly, EQ was radically different than UO in almost every single way. While UO catered to the explorer and the killer, EQ was designed for the achiever and socializer. The final piece of the original ‘big three’ was Asheron’s Call. When AC came out, was it considered ‘EQ in a random setting’? Again, no. And AC had its own charm and gameplay that was again different than UO or EQ. The original ‘big three’ where all successful in their own way, and offered gamers at the time three unique choices in setting, gameplay, and overall game design philosophy.

Fast forward to 2004 and World of Warcraft, and you start hearing talk of ‘a more polished EQ’. Sure the setting was different, WoW brought a huge host of design changes that later became MMO standards, and above all it was a damn fun game, but it was not the radical change that UO/EQ/AC were when compared to each other. WoW followed the EQ formula, gave it a bigger budget, and polished it until it was done.

Finally, we have Age of Conan and soon Warhammer Online, two major games that from day one were being billed as ‘WoW but with feature x’. Which is not exactly a bad thing in terms of good MMO gaming from a pure fan perspective (readers know I’m dying to play WAR), but it does say something about the current trend in MMO gaming, and what the future might hold. With budgets as big as they are today, and with so much at stake financially, perhaps the days of great innovation are gone, and the best we can hope for in a triple A title going forward is the EQ formula + twist x. Look at any major trend that blew up, be it shooter games (Doom), sports games (Madden), or racing games (Need for Speed, Grand Turismo), and what do we see? Madden (insert current year), the same game as last year but with one new gimmick. Is it really that shocking that MMO gaming, which officially became ‘kind of a big deal’, has followed the same pattern of success?

Innovation is still alive and well, but you won’t find it in games with millions of subscribers. You will find it in games like EVE, A Tale in the Desert, Shadowbane, and countless other ‘niche’ games. And has history has shown us time and time again, the niche will be culled; the best features harvested out, and ‘polished’ for the release of WoW2. And like you, I’ll be there day one, like a good little fanboi, dying to get into beta.

AoC bashing, LoTRO update, ISK talk.

Ah Friday sweetness.

Heartless and Rick over at /random both commented on a Massively report about AoC and it’s troubles with its much-hyped endgame PvP. It would seem that massive amounts of high details characters letting off fancy spell effects all in one place cause lag. Odd right? And the solution? Turn off the fancy stuff, reduce the visibility of said masses, and /pray. Oh, and point out that while it’s a known issue, it really only effects those fools who, god forbid, played the game too much and leveled too fast. Everyone who goes at the desired pace Funcom set ‘should’ be fine. Looks like Funcom has some PR positions open, someone should apply, soon.

In functional game news, Aria and I are just about finished with the Lone Lands in LoTRO. I know some people hate the zone, but I personally really enjoyed it. The theme, a barren landscape with old ruins (ok, so every zone in LoTRO has old ruins, but whatever they look sweet) and a long road running down the middle just works for me, plus Weathertop looks fantastic. We are on the final part of Book 2, and really looking forward to getting a group and finishing it up. After that, it’s back to the North Downs and maybe some early Evendim action.

In EVE-land (space?), I’m building up my bank account running missions with my combat pilot. The long time off really increased his power due to all the skill gain, and I’m having a much easier time with all the missions. Once that bank account is good and healthy, it’s going to be PvP time. Really, really looking forward to that.

Have a good weekend everyone!