I had an odd, somewhat amusing experience in WoW recently. I’ve been playing a lot of dungeon instances lately, partly because I’ve never actually done any WoW dungeons before, and partly because I wanted to level a mage without going through the hassle of soloing. Almost every instance has been an enjoyable, workmanlike experience … until this tank decided to be an ass. So the random dungeon selector came up with the Scarlet Monastary. (667 words.)

Herding Cats has an interesting post up about how we, the gaming community, may have shot ourselves in the foot by telling MMO developers to limit cash shop purchases to cosmetic items so that the game won’t turn pay-to-win. But she argues that when you play an MMO only for cosmetic items, a cosmetic cash shop is pay-to-win. I’m one of those people who unofficially agreed that cosmetic items are fine in cash shops, because I personally don’t care that much about cosmetic items. (464 words.)

NaNoWriMo is off to a mediocre start this year, as I am running about 900 words behind after the first weekend. Not too bad, really, considering what a collosal chore it has been to get writing. I feel like there’s a compelling story in this mess of text somewhere but I’m having a hard time getting to it. I am writing this year with zero preparation, by the way, other than some ideas jotted down so I wouldn’t forget them. (104 words.)

I stopped by GW2 and discovered a big ol’ patch had happened, and when I logged in to see if there was any chance of defeating Tequatl, I had mail telling me to go to Kessex Hills to save the world again. I could describe it, but Inventory Full did a nice summary already: http://bhagpuss.blogspot.com/2013/10/next-stop-kessex-hills-all-change-here.html I haven’t played GW2 seriously in a long time but I was able to get through the initial Tower of Nightmares instance. (354 words.)

Autumn (aka. Halloween) celebrations are a staple of modern MMORPGs. Ye gods what is that? (I was going to put another picture captioned “It’s always Halloween in Kingsmouth!” but I couldn’t find my screenshot.) (34 words.)

NaNoWriMo starts tomorrow, and I couldn’t be more apathetic about it. A few weeks ago I was very excited about a story idea, but now I’m in that classic writer’s mood that goes something like this: “So what if I write a cool story, nobody is ever going to read it anyway.” At least I think it’s a classic writer’s mood. Maybe it’s just me. Maybe it means I’m writing for the wrong reasons. (109 words.)

My first month of FFXIV ends on Nov. 1 so I need to decide whether to subscribe or not. I think I will, because it is definitely the “freshest” MMO I’m playing right now, although perhaps not right away. (I’ve also been on a weird WoW kick lately, but that’s another story.) There is an endless number of things to do in the game if you bounce between adventuring, gathering, and crafting, particularly since you can change classes at will. (236 words.)

Playing WoW again recently, it dawned on me why it’s been so popular. It’s a good game and all, and it’s more addictive than blue meth, but I think that one of the main things that pushes it over the top from niche game to mainstream hit is: It doesn’t take itself seriously. Most people would probably be embarassed to admit that they play a game involving elves and dwarves and knights and dragons. (358 words.)

I saw an announcement recently about the start of the Guild Wars 2 World versus World “season.” I personally have never gotten into the WvW thing in GW2, so I’m not sure why I’m supposed to care about a new season. Conceptually I like the idea of jumping in there, zerging around for a while, and leaving, but it never seems to work out that way. First of all, I’ve never been a fan of PvP in any MMO, because it’s inherently random. (369 words.)

When I logged back into LotRO for the first time in a long time, I remembered one of the main reasons I stopped playing: On the outside looking in... It was Book 3, Chapter 5, Part II of III. I’ve probably been stuck on that quest for well over a year. It says you can do it solo, but I was facerolled every time. Lies! The Elf-stone's inspiration is no help at all. (288 words.)

Writing Excuses recently challenged the standard newbie writing advice that you should “silence your inner editor” while writing. Instead, Mary advised that you need only silence your “inner heckler,” while harnessing your “inner editor” to tell you when you need to improve your writing. Personally I think Mary completely missed the mark on this one. (And I got the sense that Brandon wasn’t on board either.) The “inner editor” as I’ve understood it is not so much a heckler as it is someone who is obsessed with good grammar and who is terrified of making a mistake. (243 words.)

Rift completed server merges. I didn’t notice any change, personally. I logged in for a few minutes, decided I still had no interest in the Fae Autumn Festival thingy, then logged out again. It kind of sucks that nobody is playing it anymore. Where did everyone go? FFXIV, the newest shiney? Or back to some other game? (57 words.)

Can we talk about the tab targeting in FFXIV? And when I say “talk” I mean “rant” and when I say “we” I mean “me.” The tab targeting in FFXIV is the worst I have ever seen. It makes absolutely no sense. When I hit tab to switch to the next target, I expect the “next” target to be somewhere in the same vicinity as the first target. But for some reason, when you hit tab, suddenly you’re targeting some monster a mile away from everyone else who isn’t even attacking. (240 words.)

Perhaps as a result of a post on Inventory Full and a post on Herding Cats, I found myself playing WoW over the weekend. It was not one of my better weekends in terms of getting productive things done in my life, but I choose to think of that as the cause of playing WoW, rather than the effect. Anyway, I made a number of observations about WoW as compared to more modern MMOs. (657 words.)

From what I can tell, the two most anticipated MMOs “coming soon” are WildStar and Elder Scrolls Online. WildStar I can only assume because it’s made by some former WoW developers, and ESO because, well, it’s Elder Scrolls, man, come on. Anyway, a video was recently posted showing ESO character creation options, and wow, it looks pretty awesome. I’m not sure why I thought this but I figured ESO would be a lot more graphically simplified than Skyrim, but it actually looks pretty similar. (124 words.)