This is bad enough for me to come out of hiding. According to a post on the official forums, Blizzard will begin displaying everyone’s real first and last names with their forum posts. This is not only an invasion of privacy and something that will lead to stolen passwords and accounts even beyond the scope of Blizzard’s products, but it’s an incredible risk and will likely result in major real world problems (such as people being murdered because of who they are on the forums… and no, I’m not exaggerating). I’m linking the original post by Nethaera below because I assume they’ll get wise to how bad this decision is and will rescind the post eventually. Continue Reading »

This is Derek Smart’s Open Letter to David Allen. I don’t feel it is prudent or even necessary to comment further.

I’m not going to specifically comment on Blizzard making an in-game mount available for digital purchase, or even how it can both fly and run at high speeds (it can even run in places where flying mounts aren’t allowed). I won’t even elaborate on the absurdity of a 100,000+ queue with a 7+ hour wait time. That’s dangerous ground to tread on. What’s not dangerous is letting it speak for itself. “Please note that being in the queue does not guarantee that you will have the opportunity to purchase an item. Once you have reached the front of the line you will be sent to checkout, at which point you will have 15 minutes to complete your transaction.” Image beyond the break. Continue Reading »

If you’re a big PvP MMO fan, I’d be interested to hear what you’re looking for. Balanced PvP combat? Compelling PvE combat? Safe cities and/or zones? Territorial control (like in EVE)? Player-built cities (like in Shadowbane)? Ship-to-ship combat (like in Darkfall)? What is it you are after when you are interested in a PvP MMO? What’s most important? Personally, I’d probably just say “yes” to all of them. But, for me, the most important things are territorial control in a compelling environment. Balanced combat is something I like, but mostly I’m looking for not-outrageously-imbalanced combat. There should also be some designated safe cities so you can hang out, but I feel like everything (apart from, say, a newbie island) should be open outside of there.

I was linked to an article with the following tagline: “Doubts raised on the value of public betas.” It’s essentially a commentary on open betas not being useful to the development process. It’s interesting, because I thought we’d figured this whole thing out back in about 2004. I’m not a panel, but I can say fairly definitively that open betas are very useful, in roughly these statistically-irrelevant percentages: Continue Reading »