Se7en Tidbits: “I Didn’t Like KOTOR Either” or “Blizzard Tucks Tail”

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

• “In order to actually progress, I figured it was time to complete some quests and get on with the story.” Werit gets in touch with his skilled side. On a related sidenote, Fool’s Age also seems to be getting into Fallen Earth lately, and with Syp already gushing praise for several months, perhaps I should get the post-apocalyptic goodness another shot.

• “Why would I pay – whether a subscription or a one-time access fee – for additional content that will pose no challenge to me because I have already outleveled it?” A biologist’s explains why the F2P model for LotRO has not been sold well to the player base.

• “I was the one person I know who didn’t like KOTOR when it came out. I played it, because it was an Important Game at the time, but I didn’t think much of it. I played Star Wars Galaxies too, because I try almost every MMO that comes out (well, I did back when only a few came out every year…I guess these days I can no longer claim to try them all).” Pete is a man after my own heart. I didn’t like KOTOR when it first game out either (you’re not the only one!), and up until 3 years ago, i tried out about every MMO that came out. Not any more.

• “Man I watched this trailer, and it was better then Viagra. The hate was delicious.” River has a tent in his pants.

• “I don’t have hard numbers to prove it besides a lot of circumstantial evidence, the latest of wich is the announcement that they will be cutting a lot of the new features of the Cataclysm expansion. When you’re in a hurry, the new features are usually the first ones on the cutting floor.” Lonomonkey argues Blizzard is compromising content for strict timelines.

• “A system that implemented this isn’t that hard to conceptualize (at least theoretically, real code always makes easy ideas hard). Right now, raid instances have an existence in the world. My character is tied to this specific raid instance, which exists even when my character is not online. And this has consequences. In the worst case, the raid id can be “stolen”, and the remainder of the raid completed by another group, leaving most of the people in first group out in the cold.” Rohan explores a comment on his blog about how Blizzard’s Real ID system will lead to a Raid Finder feature in Cataclysm.

• “Seriously, it’s like they took a brave step toward introducing alternative advancement and innovative features, and then freaked the heck out and run away.” Syp miraculously finds time during his daughter’s baptism, and comments on Blizzard pulling the plug on some innovative Cataclysm features.