I was wrong. Another subscription MMO caves in, unable to make a go of things on monthly fees alone.  Or they feel that the grass must surely be greener on the free to play side of the fence. Of course, my prediction was back when Scott Hartsman was still on board and before they put […]

Or so says the press release. My ambivalence towards the game continues however. I like the connection with EVE Online, the idea of continuing the struggle on the surface of planets, the possibilities of the combined in-game markets, and, most of all, the idea of bombing DUST players from orbit while in my spaceship just […]

A few years back, at the height of the housing boom, we decided to move.  We listed our house at the market price for our neighborhood, and the first day on the market we got an offer for roughly 60% of what we were asking.  Somebody sensed, as we all were beginning to at that […]

Whatever happened, we need to find out why it happened. But clearly it should not have happened. -Rep. Steny Hoyer (D-Maryland) We are reaching that time of the year when the sun is shining and various members of our regular Saturday night instance group are sometimes lured outside to see the world, visit relatives, or […]

Just about two months back it was announced that Google Reader was going to be shut down. The reasons given were declining usage and the Bizarro world excuse that killing it would lead to a better user experience. I cannot speak to the former, except to say that Google pushed a lot of people off […]

I stood again in Middle-earth. In was in Archet, one of the small towns around Bree, and the forces of Sauron prepared to strike. I was in Lord of the Rings Online. My new character was set to start out on the long… six years long at this point which, if we were following the […]

While Middle-earth has been calling again of late… my relationship with that game has become as complicated as my relationship with EverQuest at this point… I have still found a bit of time to expand my reach in Storm Legion. Previously I had made my way through Cape Jule and Pelladane, finishing up what are […]

Whoops, the new launcher than came out today had… issues. Which I think makes it an official EVE Online feature! It even got Winterblink to make a Warp Drive Active comic about it. CCP took their old launcher, which just used to show some news and ads along with checking to see if you game […]

At launch the problem was  Error 37 and other related “always online” issues. Then it was how the gold auction house was killing the game, something I first brought up in May of last year but which Blizzard, in the form of  Jay Wilson, was still professing amazement about 10 months later.  And then there […]

Also today, I went to GameStop. Me: "How do you guys feel about the Xbox One?" Store clerk: "We don't sell those anymore."— Scott Nichols (@Duckols) May 23, 2013 When it comes to the recently announced Xbox One, I am not the target audience, having no desire to get another gaming console.  That is all […]

Every so often I get the urge to run off and start another blog, as though this one wasn’t enough. Sometimes I think I have a funny idea.  Sometimes I repeat something I have already done. And for some reason, I always feel the need to make up yet another pseudonym.  I don’t know why. […]

Travel is always a hot button issue.  Long have been the debates between convenience and seeing, or making people see, the world.  What is a waste of time and what builds character and all that. And opinion has changed on it over time. For example, in WoW, you used to have to go and find […]

Dear Madam Author Unknown, US Civil War I am a soldier and my speech is rough and plain I’m not much used to writing and I hate to give you pain But I promised I would do it and he thought it might be so If it came from one who loved him perhaps it […]

I think that by this point in time, some fifteen years down the road from the launch of Ultima Online, having a player economy is one of the hallmarks of games I consider to be MMOs, at least when I use the term. If there is no player to player economy, then the game is […]

According to Venture Beat, the Blizzard project code named Titan, the potential next big thing from the company, has been sent back to the drawing board and is now unlikely to see the light of day before 2016. Developers have been diverted to other projects while the core team starts over. So, World of Warcraft […]

I have made it to the Lone Lands already, twice over. There was a bit of a push in our kinship to get to level 25 ASAP, with the intent of doing the Great Barrow in kinship groups… erm… fellowships.  Kinship fellowships just sounds odd. So I put in a bit of effort to get […]

With the summer hiatus upon us, we have begun looking at other games.  Gaff and I have been back in Middle-earth.  Potshot, on the other hand, was keen for fresher, if maybe not greener, pastures.  He has been been poking his nose into Neverwinter. Ah, Neverwinter. A new MMO-ish sort of game based on the […]

“How many MMOs have been successful in the U.S.? Two. World of Warcraft and EverQuest. Kind of a bad slugging percentage.” Take-Two Interactive chairman Strauss Zelnick, arguing that MMOs don’t work in the West I am not sure what measure of success you would be using if you declared that the only two successful MMOs […]

Reblogged from Tish Tosh Tesh: This is my 600th post.  Seems like it ought to be an occasion of some sort.  So let's see... Dice, Rats and Dragons, Oh, My! Dice! I'm doing a Kickstarter campaign for my "Rusty Fudge" Tinker Dice and their siblings (I have the numbered designs, fudge designs and a lead […]

The Site Aside from putting all of my banners in a post where I (and everybody else) can easily find them, general site related news has been pretty slim.  And after a month of record setting page views, things are back down to the level of mere mortals… and down a bit from even there.  […]

It wasn’t even the new launcher’s fault this time. Saturday afternoon/evening my local time it was becoming difficult to log into EVE Online.  Rumors started to float about a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack First there was this At 02:05 GMT June 2nd, CCP became aware of a significant and sustained distributed denial-of-service attack […]

…all microtransactions that sell game content also destroy equity. -Ramin Shokrizade, in his The Barrier to Big post Free to play, revenue models, and why some MMOs succeed while others fail remain hot topics in the MMO blogesphere, with a myriad of different opinions represented. One recent thread has been the impact on MMOs of […]

…all microtransactions that sell game content also destroy equity. -Ramin Shokrizade, in his The Barrier to Big post Free to play, revenue models, and why some MMOs succeed while others fail remain hot topics in the MMO blogesphere, with a myriad of different opinions represented. One recent thread has been the impact on MMOs of […]

It wasn’t even the new launcher’s fault this time. Saturday afternoon/evening my local time it was becoming difficult to log into EVE Online.  Rumors started to float about a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack First there was this At 02:05 GMT June 2nd, CCP became aware of a significant and sustained distributed denial-of-service attack […]

Reblogged from Tish Tosh Tesh: This is my 600th post.  Seems like it ought to be an occasion of some sort.  So let's see... Dice, Rats and Dragons, Oh, My! Dice! I'm doing a Kickstarter campaign for my "Rusty Fudge" Tinker Dice and their siblings (I have the numbered designs, fudge designs and a lead […]