After a patching process that seemed to take hours (possibly because I was playing another game while I waited), I spent a couple of minutes in LotRO to see the class changes in Helm’s Deep. (I am only 45 so I am nowhere near seeing the content of Helm’s Deep.) It looks like all they did was integrate industry-standard “skill trees” into the game, so you have to choose one of three specializations for your character. For my Hunter, I got to pick from a Jack-of-all-Trades tree, a Ranged DPS tree, and a Traps-base tree. I don’t mind the change but I do think it makes LotRO gameplay a bit less unique. Not something I would rage quit over, though. Who knows, maybe it will bring in some new players. (130 words.)

With the announcement of Warlords of Draenor, there was a bit of buzz around the MMO-sphere about the role of the leveling process. I was struck by a post on Healing the Masses suggesting that it’s time to remove the leveling game entirely from MMOs so that we no longer segregate the players into groups that can’t play together. … an ideology that is slowly dying, an ideology that never really belonged much in the first place in this genre. (585 words.)

We all know that blockbuster MMOs EQ Next/Landmark (the minecraft one), WildStar (the cartoon one), and The Elder Scrolls Online (the D&D one) are “coming soon.” But a while back some posts I saw about a Korean-made MMO called Black Desert caught my eye. I hadn’t heard of it before, so I did some investigation. ( That means I went to Wikipedia .) Wikipedia says it’s a “sandbox-oriented” MMO, but I’m not entirely sure what that means. The Black Desert site itself says it will be “focused on Sandbox Features, PvP and PvE.” Again, that’s about as vague as it gets. I’m not even sure it’s going to be available in English-speaking countries. I’ve got to think that since they made an English web page, they’re planning an English version of the game. (160 words.)

Trion Worlds is working on something called Trove. Now when Trion does something, I tend to take notice, because Rift is hands down the best themepark MMO out there right now. Any arguments you might have against my statement are invalid, because I said so. (Defiance, on the other hand, was a bit meh.) I anxiously looked at the screenshots for Trove and … drooped with disappointment. Really? 8-bit crap graphics? Really? People are still into this? What is wrong with people? (289 words.)

I think it’s safe to say this: I got an invitation for this weekend’s TESO beta test. I assume it’s okay to say that because they made a big public announcement that they were sending out the invitations. I had to accept a rather harsh-sounding NDA though so I don’t think I’ll be able to say much of anything else. Beta testing is a delicate balance. On the one hand, it’s super exciting to see a new shiney and possibly shape the course of its future (though to be honest, in my experience, beta reports are largely ignored unless it is a game-breaking bug), but on the other hand, you don’t want to play so much that you burn out before the game even launches. Not to mention all of your progress is going to get wiped anyway. So it’s like, “Yay, I’m in the beta!” Followed shortly by, “Crap, this could ruin the game for me.” (157 words.)

I’m trying to wrap my head around this EQ Next/Landmark thing. If I’m understanding this correctly, what we’re buying in Landmark is the toolset that a game developer would use to create an MMO game world. SOE must have looked at their tools and said, “You know, these tools are so fun and intuitive to use, maybe we could polish them up a bit and sell them, because people really seem to like building virtual things.” (349 words.)

Last night I once again approached my NaNoWriMo writing at about 9:00, which is the absolute latest I can possibly start writing with any expectation of getting anything done. Once again I stared at a blank document, not even looking at the previous day’s writing, wondering how on earth I could possibly come up with 1,667 words to write of a story that has no outline. Not just 1,667 words either. I actually need slightly more than 2,000 words a day to catch up again. (553 words.)

Here are some first impressions of the newly announced WoW expansion Warlords of Draenor. I’m not a hardcore WoW player but recently I’ve been playing more than I usually do, so I have more of an opinion than “meh, whatever.” New Character Models. It’s about time, I say. I can’t believe anyone would oppose this. I found it rather annoying that they made these nice, smooth panda models and animations for MoP but left everybody else with like fourty-seven triangles and six frames of movement. (508 words.)

Oh hey, according to the mid-season WvW report, Blackgate is winning. Go Blackgate! When I randomly chose Blackgate to play on, I picked a winner! (Actually it wasn’t random. It was a choice between Blackgate which was the “coolest” sounding server, or Yak’s Bend which was the “funniest” sounding server, and in the end I went for coolness.) My only contribution to the war effort was capturing one empty Ruins and escorting one yak. (289 words.)

This isn’t MMO related, but here’s a couple cents on the new consoles. I have a PS3 Slim so I don’t expect I’ll be getting a PS4 until developers stop making games for the PS3. However, since I’ve never owned an Xbox, I will probably get an Xbox One in the somewhat near future, possibly after Christmas, at which time I will also have to get a TV to connect it to. :) (73 words.)