Se7en Tidbits: “My Parents Were MMO Quest-Givers” or “Camping Cyclops”

Here are a few tidbits that caught my attention for one reason or another this week:

• “Following the current trend of MMORPGs, this blog has now become Free-To-Read.” With Turbine’s recent announcement to have Lord of the Rings Online go free-to-play, a distraught Gordon begins to lose it.

• “[Blizzard has] never really been happy about class based content though, not since vanilla which did feature class questlines, class mounts, class epics, and so on. To my mind, and in the world of F2P and cash shops, that’s a lost opportunity.” Spinks delves into the importance of splats and Blizzard’s masked hate of all things class-oriented.

• “Sure, some of them turn out to be terribly disjointed aberrations of the original (Legolaz, Leggolas, and Legolastwo come to mind) but it just goes to show the persistence of some characters in geek lore.” Frank explores the dubious science of naming your toons in MMOs. [Side note Frank, I have even seen a ‘Legsolass’ (legs o lass).]

• “I remember waiting on the Cyclops to spawn for the Jboots ring (in multiple spots) and while it was often an exercise in futility, there is still something about it that I enjoyed while doing it.” Keen talks about his inner masochist.

• “MMOs?  Dude, my parents were quest-givers, and they simply created a bounty sheet and spelled out the rewards ahead of time.” – Syp finally reveals the root of his MMO addiction: his parents!

• “There is something called the endowment effect, which means that you value something you have more than something you don’t.” Tobold finds a Batterd Hilt, and decides to keep it for himself.

• “This means that players can choose for themselves what to do with these points from what is offered, rather than implicitly pay for content that may not matter so much to them.” Sente counts the blessings an F2P model brings.