aspendawn
Latest
"Disgruntled ArenaNet employee" blogger finally admits it was a hoax
If you're a long time fan of Guild Wars, or you're just finely-tuned into the realm of MMO news as any good Massively reader should be, you may remember some controversy that erupted last year regarding a blog that claimed to be written by a disgruntled former employee of ArenaNet. This blog supposedly outed ArenaNet for working with gold farmers in some elaborate scheme to make the company more money, undercut the dedicated player-base and massacre hundreds of thousands of small fluffy bunnies. Okay, we may have exaggerated a bit on that last one.Needless to say, the interwebs were quite worked up over this, and ArenaNet came under fire several times for it. Well, it turns out that the creator of that blog finally admitted that it was all a cruel joke. They apologized (er, kinda) for the trauma they caused the community, and blamed it all on the fact that they were "bored". You may also notice that this "explanation" was created way back in July, but this just goes to show how thoroughly this person's scheme fizzled into obscurity.[Via Aspendawn]
Ask not what your MMO can do for you...
MMO players are a devoted lot. When we're not actually in our game of choice, we're often on forums arguing about the latest patches, researching new talent builds to make better use of our given class' abilities, or blogging about recent experiences. A tremendous amount of energy goes into making an MMO community what it is, both in and out of the game. But as wonderful as player enthusiasm can be in its many forms, it is frequently ignored or utterly under-utilized by game developers. And as blogger Aspendawn reflects in a recent post, when they do throw their weight behind community events, their support tends can be quite hollow -- as was the case with the EQ2 "Guild Recruitment Fair" pictured above. Her call for more developer-sanctioned mentoring systems is also spot-on, particularly for games that have been around for a while. Even if a community is friendly and welcoming, it can be intimidating jumping into a PUG when you don't quite have a grasp on your class' role just yet. We'd also love to see more events like Tabula Rasa's Friday Night Fights--events blossoming from the minds of creative gamers and taking official form with the addition of actual in-game assets to support them. It's not all fancy graphics and epic lootz, we want community too!
