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Lume the Mad reviews WotLK and its changes
MMO Blogger Lume the Mad has a nice in-depth review of all the changes coming to World of Warcraft in the form of the game's second expansion, Wrath of the Lich King. If you're a regular reader of WoW Insider, there's nothing really new here -- odds are you already know about all the changes (and have a strong opinion of some of them). But as a nice wide general overview of what's going on with the game, Lume's little writeup is very thorough.It is pretty amazing to think that before Burning Crusade released, there were no such things as Blood Elves or Draenei, the only Arena in the game was Gurubashi, and only the Horde ever had Shamans in their raids. But nowadays all of those things are commonplace, and odds are that the game will change just as much with Wrath -- siege vehicles will be a huge part of the game, Death Knights will be everywhere, achievements will be just as big a goal as any other part of the game, and phasing will be the norm (you'll never be sure that the player next to you is seeing exactly what you're seeing in the game world).Lume doesn't go so far as to call it a new game (though Blizzard may want to), but there's no question that even though the most basic game mechanics stay in place (you still use abilities on action bars to kill creatures and gain experience), the quests, graphics, and storylines will look very different. BC changed our game once, and Wrath is set to change it yet again.[via Massively]
Celebrating five years of Tobold
In the MMO genre, celebrating five years of anything is quite a feat. If you think about it, what games were you even playing five years ago? Everquest? Ultima Online? So we acknowledge that the industry is still fairly young, and blogging about it is even younger. This makes Tobold's fifth year anniversary of his MMO blog something to celebrate.It's a natural fact that blogs come and go. When there's a hot new topic and someone feels passionate about it, they let it all loose in the first few days, weeks or even months, but a very low percentage make it further than that. Tobold is the exception to this, and we respect him for the fine work he's done thus far. The future progression of MMOs and their close relationship with community-driven blogs only makes sense. They go together like tanks and aggro. So here's to many more years of Tobold, and many more years of blogging about MMOs. Cue sappy music.
KillTenRats' Zubon on the state of the genre at WorldIV
WorldIV continues their MMO blogger interview series with an interview with Zubon of KillTenRats, which is not only a great MMO blog, but also a one-of-a-kind "blogomerate"-- they're a group of people who blog as a group without actually grouping together. As the Interview at WorldIV notes, the KTR folks are off in their own separate worlds, and yet somehow all of their posting feels like it all belongs in the same place.So Zubon is just one part of the blog, but he still shares some interesting opinions about the state of the MMO world. One thing that draws him to these games, he says, is the fact that for all of their "persistent" gameplay, they're not actually persistent at all-- all the servers we're playing on now will be turned off someday, just as our sun, he says, will eventually run out of energy. Even he jokes that that sentiment strays into pretentious-ville, but it's an interesting thought: using the impermanence of virtual worlds to figure out own our impermanence and mortality.He also labels himself a fan of "niche MMOs", and then defines those as anything that strays away from the elves and orcs type of world. He specifically mentions Tale in the Desert and the upcoming Chronicles of Spellborn as two MMOs to watch in terms of bringing new innovations to the genre. All in all, a good interview with a smart guy.
