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Breakfast Topic: Are you a one toon kind of player?
I struggle with alts more than anyone I know. I have my main--my beloved druid--and she has been my One True WoW Toon since I created her in 2007. Over the years I have tried and tried again to get a second toon to max, but it just hasn't happened. This time around I'm pretty close; I have a paladin at 86 and a mage at 83, so the race is on. Will I make another one to 90 before WoD drops? With the rate it's going, if I don't, I should probably be ashamed of myself. And before you ask--no, I haven't pre-ordered, so the boost isn't an option (yet). Here's the thing, though. As much as I've always wistfully dreamed of an army of crafters to make obtaining raid items just that much less expensive, part of me always feels like I'm kind of missing out when I'm not on my main. There's still plenty of things I have yet to achieve with her, don't you know! But alas, I can't get that Double Agent or Dynamic Duo achievement with just one! How about you? Do you have an army of alts at your fingertips, or are you a one toon devotee, like myself?
Rovio adds TV channel to its games, launches Angry Birds Toons on March 17th
If Rovio wants to rival Disney, it's going to need to broaden its distribution network, right? It turns out that the company is going the opposite way, bundling a video channel inside its apps to showcase its first TV show; Angry Birds Toons -- a 52-episode series chronicling the never-ending fight against those egg-thieving pigs. In addition to phones and tablets, the show will be available on Xfinity and Samsung Smart TVs, with Roku and TV stations outside of the US to follow in short order. Of course, we're not too sure Disney's worried -- after all, it's spent $4.05 billion to get the real Mark Hamill, not Red Bird in a blonde wig.
The Daily Grind: How realistic do you like your avatars?
From the highly detailed characters in EVE Online to the beautifully impressionistic avatars in LOVE, there's a wide variety of avatar types available in MMO games. Whether you use your avatar purely for humorous results as the above EVE Online pilot did, attempt to create a character that looks at least somewhat like you, or are out to create a completely foreign fantasy being to role-play, choice abounds these days. Character creators go from automatically generated with no choice to insanely complex and detailed -- and everywhere in-between. Nonetheless, with the sheer number of options out there, this morning we thought we'd ask which you prefer? Do you like your avatar so realistic that it's almost bordering on uncanny valley? Perhaps you prefer more middle-of-the-road options like Guild Wars or other games in that general neighborhood -- not too realistic, not too cartoony? Or do you prefer to go as far into your imagination as the character creator will let you with avatars such as the ones in LOVE or World of Warcraft's stylistic, non-human offerings? Every morning, the Massively bloggers probe the minds of their readers with deep, thought-provoking questions about that most serious of topics: massively online gaming. We crave your opinions, so grab your caffeinated beverage of choice and chime in on today's Daily Grind!
WoW Code: Better than a pocket protector
If you've ever woken up in the morning and said to yourself, "Gee, I'd like to appear nerdier today," then do we have the story for you! Scare your real life friends and confuse even the staunchest gaming nerd. Use "WoW Code" in your forum signature!N: Sephare, M:Pa73, Mb: 3/56/5, Mr: Hu, S: Ravenholt-US-RPPvP, G: Twilight Empire, Pvp–, Pve+, Y2005.5, DC, Ori-MC/B, TBC-Kara, WLK-Nexus/B, L++, C-Wl/DK, R-Ud, RP++. :), V0.3What you see above you, besides a whole pile of utter confusion, is actually a World of Warcraft character broken down into very basic terms using the WoW Code method. Everything from name, to talent build, date joined, and player preferences are included!We'd take the time to break it down, but TyphoonAndrew at The Eye of the Storm blog has already done that in an easy to read format. Now if you could excuse us, we're going to go break out our Tandys and play some extreme World of Warcraft: The Molten Core on our Atari 2600s..
SwagDog and Blizzard team up to offer custom t-shirts with guild and toon info
The BlizzCon tickets are slowly (and unsurely) being sold, and the first few lucky buyers have been linked to a "BlizzCon Exclusive" from SwagDog.com -- apparently they've teamed up with Blizzard to offer real-life versions of your guild tabard on a t-shirt, and folks who attend BlizzCon will get their pick of the first shirts off the presses.Note to Blizzard and SwagDog: feel free to send the royalty checks over to me whenever you want. The bad news is that they've eschewed the idea of "t-shirt as tabard", and instead it looks like they're making a custom-printed shirt for everyone, so it'll have not just your tabard on their shirt, but your guild's name, and your character's name and realm, race, class and faction as well.As neat as these are, I think I'd like something a little more subtle -- all that text and the icons muddy it up a bit. But otherwise, definitely seems like (assuming the prices and shirt quality are respectable) a fun way to show off a little guild and toon pride.
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MMO MMOnkey: Short Circuiting Social Stereotypes with MMOs
I was playing Lord of the Rings Online one night when a player agreed with something mentioned in general chat by saying "Indeed!" Without rancor or hostility another player laughed at this stilted language and asked whether people really talked like that. Of course the question was answered with a chorus of "Indeed!" but in the ensuing conversation the player who had laughed said that he or she was from an economically disadvantaged area where the use of language like "Indeed" was wholly foreign. S/he was surprised to discover that language differed so radically among different socio-economic groups. And I thought, "Now, this is one of the reasons why MMOs are such interesting places." People categorize each other based on visual attributes like age, gender, hair and clothing style, and skin color. We also use political, religious, and social ideologies, musical, cinema, and leisure time preferences, and socio-economic class differences to divide ourselves up into different groups. The tendency to categorize and divide has more to do with the basic functioning of the human information processing system than bias or narrow mindedness on people's parts, and it is useful in allowing us to function effectively in the complex, dynamic, and often dangerious environment we call the real world. However, it does have it's drawbacks. It's long been known that people have a marked tendency to identify themselves with a group, identify people who are not members of their group as members of an out-group, and assign negative characteristics to the out-group. Moreover, we tend to spend most of our time with people who are like us. In other words, we hang out with people who look and think like we do and tend to think about people who are not like us in negative terms.
Breakfast Topic: How many characters do you play?
Player character, character, avatar, toon... Regardless of the term you use to refer to your in-game persona, I'm pretty sure we're talking about the same thing. And today, I'm curious: how many characters do you play? If advancement is your aim, it makes a lot of sense to focus your time and energy on a single character. If efficiency is your goal, perhaps you have a pair of characters to switch between depending on rested XP or what roles your party might need filled. But if your interest is variety, perhaps you have a character of each class -- or more. For my part, I actively maintain three characters. My main (a healer) raids and in my spare time I'm leveling up two alts: one to farm with (better than my healer can) and one to tank (as tanking seems to be the hardest to find component for instance groups). Three seems to be about as many as I can juggle actively -- though I have a mid-level Paladin waiting in the wings, working on it would mean I'd neglect another character. Now that I've told my tale, I'm asking you: how many characters do you play, and why?
Whistling a new toon
Jason over at Wife Aggro sends word about a good piece he posted on a subject I don't remember ever covering: how to switch over to a new main. It's an interesting thing to cover, and a situation that I bet happens more often than people think. But as Jason says, especially since the Burning Crusade was released, switching an alt up to your main is quite a task. In vanilla WoW, things weren't too bad-- you had to run BRD once or twice, run UBRS once, and you were pretty much set for endgame. But in Burning Crusade, there are lots and lots of keys and factions and questlines and decisions to deal with, so switching is a much tougher thing to do.Not to mention how your guild takes it-- dealing with grinding faction rep again is one thing, but "giving up" a character that your guild has helped equip (sometimes with epic gear) causes all kinds of drama by itself. And while it's probably easier if you're switching to benefit the guild, Jason is actually doing the opposite-- he's leaving his Holy Paladin for a raiding Rogue.Of course, this is still just a game, and you should play what you want to play. If that Warrior you've got just isn't doing it for you lately, you have every right to make that Druid you've really been enjoying your main. But you've also got to remember that this isn't a solo game-- especially in guild situations, switching from an alt to a main can have a huge effect. But if you handle it as Jason seems to be doing, by carefully considering all the consequences of such a switch, both you and your guild will be better off in the end.
Breakfast topic: Baleeted!
What's the highest level character you've ever deleted?I haven't deleted many characters at all-- when I first started playing I was on Cenarius, and I still have about nine alts all there just sitting around, never realizing that I probably won't be back. Now, I'm on Thunderhorn, and pretty much all the characters I've started I've kept. Oh, there's been a few level ones that I created for fun, and I believe I made it to level 12 or so with a dwarf Hunter before I realized I didn't ever want to play Alliance again, but I think that's it-- I just can't bring myself to throw away any characters I actually spent time on.But looking at the thread, I'm probably the exception. Lots of players toss their maxed-out characters all the time, either because they're frustrated with a class change, need extra room, or are just leaving the game for good.So what's the highest character you've deleted and why?
Patchwork enforcement on the naming policy
Pepe has done an informal but (as he says) "real FREAKIN interesting" little study of supposedly inappropriate names via the Armory. Blizzard's naming policy, as you'll know if you've ever run afoul of it, is pretty stringent-- you're not allowed to create obscene names at all (obviously), names based on real-life or well-known sources (so no trademarks or references to celebrities or Blizzard employees-- Legolas is completely out), harassing words or phrases, or "partial or complete sentences."Now, you can't really argue with most of that. The obscene stuff is a given, of course, though where Blizzard gets their criteria for obscene is anyone's guess-- one of my guildies had an undead warrior named "Skinflayer" that Blizz forced him to rename (he renamed it to Tenderheart, actually). And the copyright and famous names seems a little silly, but it's most likely just Blizzard covering their backside-- you never know what copyright holders will do when it comes to user-created content. But harassing phrases? No l33tsp33k? How can Blizzard possibly track this stuff?The fact is, as Pepe points out very effectively, that they can't (except on Blizzard employees, strangely enough). Reported names, of course, will probably get a message that they must be changed, but there's no way that Blizzard actually examines the rolls name by name to figure out which are compliant with the ToS and which aren't. The problem, then, becomes who gets punished and who doesn't, and what whims that comes by. While I'm with Blizzard on the player bans, I'm not with them on this one-- either they need to stick to their naming policy or change it. As Pepe shows, just a few minutes of Armory browsing yields hundreds of "violations." I've included all of Pepe's links after the break-- be warned that some of the names are in fact obscene according to Blizzard's policy, and thus might be offensive to some of our readers.
Matinee at the Bijou to bring classic cartoons to PBS-HD
Those glorious Saturday mornings filled with cartoons and a complete lack of responsibility will always hold a special place in our hearts, and we're thrilled to hear that some faithful classics are about to get reborn on PBS-HD. According to Bijou Bob's official weblog, PBS has given "the green light" to producers to revive some of the greatest 'toons of the past, and just as soon as sufficient sponsors are found, you can expect to see the renditions in stunning HD, which will likely prove that Betty Boop actually is forever young. The 12-episode season is slated to air sometime in 2007, with "Betty Boop, Tom & Jerry, and the Fleischer Superman cartoons being named as potential candidates for the show." Additionally, you can expect to see see "a short subject, a serial chapter, and a feature film" to go along with the newly-rendered cartoons, all of which will be hosted by Debbie Reynolds. So if you're looking to relive a bit of your past, and don't mind the HD makeover, the Matinee at the Bijou should be right up your alley.[Via ToonZone]
Avatar: The Last Airbender bends its way onto the PSP
What would the PSP be without cartoon-based games like Spongebob and Dragon Ball Z? While many of these games don't appeal to older games like most of us here, they do bring in a very important demographic and help to usher in the next generation of gamers.Having said that, another one of these toon games is making its way onto the PSP in the form of THQ's Avatar: The Last Airbender on Oct. 10.In the game, players will take control of Aang, Katara, Haru and Sokka, and will have the ability to customize bending powers to master the four elements of Earth, Air, Water and Fire. From what it looks like so far, there may not be any multi-player function, which may lead to many young boy's shedding tears and getting beaten up at school.[Via FSC Publishing]
