Ask Massively: The diversity of New England edition
Every year, when I head up to PAX East, some well-intentioned soul will point out that it must be nice to have a convention so close to home. Except it's really not. I live in Connecticut, and PAX East is in Boston. Despite what years of media exposure may have led you to believe, New England is not a uniform sea of snow, lobsters, and wizened old men spouting curmudgeonly wisdom. The lobsters are pretty much all Maine, for instance, and Rhode Island has the mafia instead of wizened old men. Also, no one in Connecticut says "cah." We say "car."
But you didn't click on through for me waxing poetic about my home region, I imagine. No, you came here for this week's installment of Ask Massively, which is all about how we schedule articles and why it seems like time occasionally passes us by. If you've got a question you'd like to see answered in a future installment of the column, leave it down in the comments or mail it along to ask@massively.com. Questions may be edited slightly for clarity and/or brevity.
Jejeune asked: Why do articles on the site sometimes miss obvious things? You have articles that go up on Saturday that don't address things that happened on Friday. It seems weird.
Our articles are little time capsules.
In a perfect world, we would all have time to write everything just as it happens, meaning that every single article that goes live at 4:00 p.m. is getting its last touch of polish at around 3:55 p.m. However, when we actually do that, our editors sprout several new gray hairs. So instead, we have our articles done the day before they're meant to go live -- a Saturday article would be submitted for editing on Friday, for instance.
Several of us work a bit further ahead even than that (I'm writing this up on a Monday, for example). This gives us the distinct advantage of being able to substitute in something else when necessary. But the net result is that if something major happens right between an article's completion and publication, we sometimes wind up missing it. It's the trade we make for efficiency in scheduling and high-quality, unrushed writing.
Note that this only applies for features such as, well, Ask Massively. News posts are handled very differently.
RogueJedi86 mused: If I had a time machine, I'd say the MMO that is best suited for lovers of crafting would be Star Wars Galaxies.
I have a time machine! It just only travels in the one direction, which is forward.
Looking for some advice on which class is best for soloing in Aion? Not sure who this Raph Koster fellow is? Curious about the release date of NCsoft's newest MMO? You've come to the right place! No one knows MMOs like we do. If there's anything you'd like to know about the MMO genre or the site itself, Ask Massively is here to help every Thursday afternoon. Just ask!
