Roderick

It was Zelda, possibly Phantom Hourglass. (Damn I was disappointed by Spirit Tracks in hindsight!)

I wish I could go! But I can't.

This might be horrible to say, but Host Master was pretty much my favourite thing Double Fine did after Psychonauts. Oh, so good.

We've had this discussion before Warcraft has always had the 'piss lines' referencing pop songs, series and whatnot. With wow it might seem more extravagant, but the humor just scaled along with the whole game. World of Warcraft is a biiiiiiig game. Percentage-wise the amount of time spent on humor will be roughly the same.

I read the interview about Fallout 2 before (or at any case heard the story of it). I do agree that what happened isn't a good thing, don't get me wrong. But I think WoW is such a large, non-linear thing that you'd be amiss to treat it as any other singleplayer experience. That's why I likened it to the internet. Though the meme stuff may be a little too ubiquitous for this to be completely true, in WoW you are completely free to choose which zone to enter and which questline to follow. So if you enter a zone like the Goblin one in Cataclysm, that you'll know to be full of injokes, there's absolutely no reason not to notice that and decide to go somewhere else that's less obvious with it. The game facilitates making your own adventure. Right now I've sampled pretty much everything the Horde side has to offer and at no point did I get the feeling the experience was being overshadowed by meme stuff. But as we've read in this topic, opinions on that differ and that's fine.

I agree with you on that I've also always loved the exploration (I believe I'm of that type of MMO gamer, the explorer or whatever). But lately I've been enjoying the end-game a lot. With Wrath of the Lich King, Blizzard made a tremendous (and succesful) effort to keep dungeons really short and beautiful, so it never really bores. There's also huge diversity and the way they set up the tier system is that you can now choose what you want to play, and you'll still get justice points to get good gear. I've never liked endless grinding (ugh), but I've found that with the occasional dungeon I do, I still get a feeling of gaining a lot. I've also been getting a lot of positive impressions of the community as helpful and fun. That might be just the luck of the draw though As for the memes, I can't really be bothered by them. WoW is such a rich tapestry of themes, influences and ideas that it's easy to just cherrypick the stuff you like and skip the rest. It's no different than, say, the internet itself: there'll always be places and things you dislike, but that's no reason not to visit the sites that you do enjoy.

I did the calculations and 18 millions words translates to roughly 3500 entries (with an average word count of 5000). For anyone interested, here's a link to a PDF of the story: http://www.captainaugust.com/ftp/jacksonsfarewell.pdf Don't hesitate to share your opinion with me via PM

That is depressing and accurate. JRPGs

Oh fuck, Dot Blocker is genius :tup:

Right, I got an honorable mention in the Blizzard writing competition for my story Jackson's Farewell. That's not too bad! http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=27292696904&sid=1

The Cataclysm intro cinematic has been released and I like it. The monologue is typical over-the-top Blizzard writing, which you either like or you don't. Though I've found it increasingly hard to appreciate (my first groan-moment was a couple years back when Illidan shouted 'you are not prepared' at us), the cinematic wins me over with really nice shots of Azeroth devastation. And you must admit, that's one bad-ass dragon!

Tromso looks super nice! Those pictures are great Nachimir, I'm glad you didn't get hurt. It wouldn't do to have one of our scarce members to suffer bodily damage. Have a med kit. As for myself, it's the 18th... and that means that, if Blizzard kept their promise, they'll announce the winrars of the Global Writing Competition today. Stomach firmly in a knot, I'm F5-ing the day away. Just kidding, I'm working pretty hard to get some crazy deadline. Work never sleeps!

So far I'm liking the new patch! My Death Knight's ghoul pet can now transform into a big monstrosity, there's a great more focus on Death Coil as a resource mechanic and all runic power spells are cheaper. Good stuff. Today I got the Loremaster achievement for the entire old world and did the first pre-Icecrown Citadel dungeons (Forge of Souls and Pit of Saron). I'm also feverishly trying to level my Inscription but it's incredibly slow and tedious. I have to persist though, if I want to be able to do my thang in Cataclysm. All in all, a bucket of fun!

Keep working at it. And update that damn portfolio! That's some important stuff

This is 100% true. It's astounding how film can make things look great that in real life look so flimsy and stupid. Especially costumes never cease to amaze me. Case in point: the wizard outfit Gary Oldman wears in the wizard topic. In broad daylight, with a normal camera, (even though it's not even half bad) it looks pretty gaudy. On film it'll drop your jaw.

You might be! You'd be wrong to look at their popcorn appeal and overlook the incredible storytelling craft that went into these movies.

I also doubt that Old Republic will be extremely bad. It may be a little middling as far as MMO's go, but the first reaction I got from people around me was that it wasn't bad at all.

Just never become a prison guard for Magneto's cell. It sounds pretty exciting, boosting iron levels in your blood. As far as medical things go, that's a killer line. Now with 200% more iron.

Pretty sad story, including scary thoughts about KotoR. I thought Bioware treated its employees with a little more respect though? Or did this not happen on their watch?

That sounds like pretty typical Lionhead fun. It's what they're pretty good at, so I expect this to be a good time

Just to be clear on this, I have no problems whatsoever with moral choices having in-game consequences as they would have in real life. In fact, that's what makes it interesting in the first place. Otherwise, why bother? My grief is purely with the inclusion of a 'game' mechanic on top of those moral choices, systematizing it and thereby lessening the experience in the ways I've mentioned above.

It's so strange that Fable 2 had the right idea when it came to clothing: it (usually) does NOTHING for you, so whatever you're wearing boils down purely to your own fancy. Which is great, 'cause now you're wearing exactly what you want to, it's the deepest expression of yourself. But then when it comes to morality, which is the whole fucking point of their game, they fall into the trap of removing any real choice. Here's the thing. Imagine if Mass Effect didn't track your choices and put them into a paragon/renegade bar. That would increase the freedom you feel and experience a thousandfold. As soon as you understand how these bars work in games, you're stuck. The first decision you make as to your alignment is the one you're stuck with for the rest of the game. The whole point of having moral choices is made null and void right there, at the start. Interestingly, I spoke to a Bioware developer last year on the Gamescom in Cologne about this, and he told me my point had never been raised in the team at all. It had just never occurred to them.

When Jeff Goldblum explains chaos theory, you know he's actually talking about wizards.

I've been getting increasingly frustrated with any sort of representation of morality in games in the form of bars, karma or whatever binary (or not!) system. The big mistake developers make is thinking that just because they have moral choices in their game, they need to make it into a gameplay mechanic. BUT THEY DON'T. Using it in gameplay mechanics only causes the player's moral choices to become min-maxing decisions based on whatever perks either way (good/evil) brings. It robs those choices of any real roleplaying value. Imagine a game that doesn't track your morality, but simply lets the interesting moral choices be their own reward. Suddenly, the whole experience is much more fluid and you choose based on what you actually feel like, on what seems most exciting, rather than thinking 'golly, I went for the 'good' path, so now I'm stuck with it or I won't get the Good ending or the Good perks all the way to the top'. I increasingly can't believe many developers don't understand this.

Good luck with the job, Errki! Must be exciting yet scary at a start-up, coming from one of the big fish? Speedy, or should I say PHILIPPE; I looked up your article. The site is really nicely done, is it a big gaming site? Anyway, perhaps I'll send you my story too, once this is all done. Would love to hear your opinion. [EDIT] Blizz just announced the winners will be announced Oct 18th. So there's another ten days that I'll be all pent-up and anxiously awaiting.