While doing some spring cleaning, I couldn’t help but notice the massive amount of drafts that have accumulated over the past two and a half years. Over one hundred and fifty to be exact. Articles that, for some reason or another, never made it to release. So I started reading through these, and thought I’d give some commentary on why they never hit the table.
- No, MMOSITE, The Subscription Model Is Not Dying (2010)
Over in the east, releasing a subscription based MMO is about as useful as slathering yourself in the Colonel’s secret herbs and spices, and throwing yourself into a pool of dead, vegan piranha.
As a writer, one of the first lessons you learn is never write while angry. Given the timing, I would say this is just around the day my college stopped deferring my loan and the bill came in the mail. The point of the article was supposed to be that the subscription model is not dying (hence the title), but flat out turned into an attack on MMOSite.com.
- Arrevan Speaks Out Against Griefer Guilds (2010)
So, as I said, I love PvP’ers of all sorts, because when it comes to almost impossible to find nooks and crannies, they are the best players to find them. If there is a game mechanic to be found, this is the group that will find it, and use it to Helm’s Deep and back before it is changed. They remind me of the kids who, when they figure out that the television has different language settings, they change every television in the house so that the weatherman’s voice is dubbed over in German, subtitled in Portuguese, but the menu language settings have been set to Polish and only he knows the correct combination of buttons to press to set everything back to normal. If you hadn’t figured out, the kid with the television remote was me, and I sat through the entire two year ban on using the remote…and the family television, as a result.
This one was supposed to be about an MMO Arrevan and a comment made by an administrator that they would not tolerate guilds that form just for the sake of griefing new players, but somehow it turned into a profession of love for player killers.
- It Smells Like Troll In Here (2010)
MMO trolls are enlightening people. Before I started MMO Fallout and truly began interacting with various groups, I had no idea that Bill Roper was part of a crime syndicate funded through lifetime subscriptions. I was also unaware that Sony had purchased Vanguard with the sole purpose of releasing the game in a poor state just so it couldn’t compete with Everquest II. Oh and Derek Smart eats babies…true story.
Again, never write while angry. A fair number of my disposed drafts are furiously punched out rants about how much time some people have to sit on the computer and endlessly trash a game that they don’t even play. Since 2010, I’ve found more productive ways to channel my anger, Team Fortress 2.
- Participating in Betas Makes Me Feel Guilty (2010)
When a beta lasts months at a time, long enough to take one or two characters to end-game, I can’t help but feel guilty that I’ve essentially played the game for free. In a way, it’s like getting a full sample pizza for free, wolfing that down, and then by the time the actual paid pizza comes to fruition and is ready for sale, I’m too full for another slice. I can always wait for the fervor around the pizza to subside and take advantage when the price comes down, but for now I’ve had my fill.
Now this I still feel guilty about. Believe it or not, but the MMO Fallout name has net me into a number of betas, and even a few alphas I can never legally speak of. I wrote this after about the second week of playing the [redacted] alpha, when I came to the realization that while this was probably one of the best MMOs I had played at the time, by the time the game launched I would likely have exhausted the content.
- Why MMOs Can Never Be Immersive (2011)
Imagine this, gentlemen: You’re walking through the streets, and at the corner you come across a beautiful woman, clad in nothing but a frilly bra and underwear. As she looks at you seductively, using the hottest /dance emote available, she says “4g 4 l4p d4nc3.” All of a sudden, you notice something about her is wrong. The chin, the hairy arms, the Adam’s Apple. IT’S A MAN, BABY!
That isn’t the real title of the article, somehow I never wrote one in. I’ve written a few articles over the years on my lack of faith that an MMO will ever truly immerse me, and my number one piece of evidence has generally been the community. I love the community, I wouldn’t be writing MMO Fallout if I didn’t, but I have to admit Amnesia: The Dark Descent would not have made me afraid to leave my bathroom door cracked open at night if there was a chat window, a quest hub, and some guy bunny hopping around screaming about much sex he has.
So I don’t expect immersion in my MMOs, and frankly I enjoy them more without that complaint holding me back. I would say that the only time an MMO has made me care about the characters is RuneScape, but I don’t count the quest series in my MMO evaluation because they are a single player story.
The archives will probably be a weekly editorial for Sundays, so I look forward to diving deeper into my draft folder and finding all of the thoughts that sounded great at the time but never made it past the cutting board.
