Quotes of the Day: Making funny faces

I honestly don’t know what to make of the SOEmote technology, other than the gut feeling that (a) it would make me pretty uncomfortable to use it, (b) players will figure out six hundred ways to abuse it by hour two of it being in the game, (c) nobody really sees other characters’ faces, no matter what Georgeson says, and (d) it’s an extremely trivial project to spend resources on in the grand scheme of the game.  Then again, it’s always good to experiment with new ideas and to throw the RPers a bone once in a while so they don’t gnaw off their legs in frustration, so we’ll see.

A couple quotes from the blogosphere:

“Indeed, if it had been announced two months ago, I don’t think any of us would be having any doubt that it’s just an April Fool’s joke gone awry on the part of SOE. Even the presenter, David Georgeson, is so incredibly enthusiastic that it’s verging on the sarcastic. I was half expecting him to turn and wink to the camera at the end.” ~ We Fly Spitfires

 

“SoE has the very worst history of innovation. They spit out ideas like the old woman at the back of the bus spitting sunflower husks into a paper cup and they pay about as much attention to them afterwards, too. The question’s not ‘should we have it?’ but ‘will you remember we’ve got it after you’ve given it to us?’” ~ Inventory Full

City of Steam soundtrack now on Amazon

Was not expecting to see this not-yet-released MMO boasting an Amazon MP3 release, but there you go: City of Steam’s soundtrack. I’ve nabbed it and am giving it a listen, but from what I can tell, it’s pretty kick-butt.

I’ll be adding this to the MMO Music page here on Bio Break.  As always, if you see any other MMO soundtracks for sale on a major site (or free on an official site), let me know!

Picture of the Day

You’re harping on my errors. Do I get to harp on yours?

LOTRO: Preorder bonuses I’d like to see with Riders of Rohan

I suspect we’ll be hearing about LOTRO: Riders of Rohan’s expansion pre-order very soon — perhaps even at E3 (no, no insider info here).  It just seems in line with how Turbine handled last year’s expansion, and it would do good to lock in players for this fall.

So the question in my mind is: What preorder bonuses and versions are Turbine going to offer this time around?  Rise of Isengard had a really great deal: bonus TP, a leveling XP trinket, cosmetic outfits, mounts, and additional zones.  DDO’s recent Menace of the Underdark preorder packages were stuffed to the brim with extras, depending on the version selected.

The one thing we DO know is coming with the preorder is the sixth inventory bag (because Turbine said so in the patch notes).  Apart from that, here are a few wish list items:

• A unique war-steed (doesn’t have to be better stats, just a different look)
• A new set of Rohan cosmetic armor (Isengard’s armor designs have been absolutely fantastic)
• Reusable LI relics
• New hair options (please please please)

I also sincerely wish that Turbine would get cosmetic pets in the game.  It’s insanely silly that the studio hasn’t already — pretty much every fantasy MMO has them, and even DDO just got them.  Plus, Lore-masters have the ability to pull a few out, so we know the tech is there.  I’m dubious this is on the slate for this fall, since it would probably be one of the big talking points of the expansion and we haven’t heard anything about it.

Vote in the NBI Awards!

I didn’t want to end the Newbie Blogger Initiative month with merely a long list of links.  It almost seemed a shame just to put them all out there with a big period after it, right?  So — and nobody knew I was going to do this — I wanted to host a quick award show to highlight some of the many, many amazing blogs that has come out of this.

I could’ve just picked the winners, but what’s the fun in that?  I quite like all the blogs and feel a little funny choosing favorites.  Instead, I want to hear what all you readers think!  I’ve picked five nominations for each of eight different categories, with the award being a pat on the back and a little increased fame and recognition.  Hey you new bloggers: You didn’t think you’d land in an award show so soon, did you?

With the exception of “Best newish blogger,” all of the nominated blogs had to be created in the April-May 2012 window to keep things fair.  “Best newish blogger” nominated blogs all originated before April 2012.  All blogs had to have registered with the NBI forums in May.

Promising star, game-specific

This award is for the game-specific blog (that is, a blog dedicated to a single MMO) that shows serious promise.  We had a wide range of these this past month, from Anarchy Online to EVE Online, so it was certainly hard to narrow the field down to five worthy choices.  Nominations: Unliving a Death Knight, Mistress of Illusions, Malefic Incantations, Argus or Bust, Sephora’s Closet.

Promising star, general games and geekery

The counterpart of the game-specific award, this general games and geekery award goes to the most promising blog that either covers a wide range of games and MMOs, or a blog that delves into other aspects of geek life.  Nominations: Casual Aggro, Kemwer Game Blog, Beyond Tannhauser Gate, The Butterfly Gamer, Gaming Abroad

Best newish blogger

Our sole “not so new” blogger award, this one will go to one of the bloggers who started prior to April 2012, yet either considered him/herself a newbie, needed help with motivation or guidance, or was trying to gain a wider audience.  Nominations: Supergirl of Lorien, Goetia’s Letters, Brazokie’s Blog Space, TL-DR, Ravalation

Most interesting angle

This category is for those blogs that decided to do a little something different than the rest of the pack.  Maybe it’s just a different format, an unusual voice, a weird topic, or all of the above.  Nominations: Hipstalotro, Gaming for Introverts, MMO One Night a Week, Inside the Magic Shop, The Frugal Gamer

Most humorous blog

This is for the blog that worked the hardest to keep us smiling, with a fun sense of humor and a knack for amusing observations.  Nominations: Vagabond Goes for a Walk, Warrior Needs Time Badly, SWTOR from Scratch, That Was an Accident!, Trippin Tyria

Best blog layout

Looks aren’t everything, but they don’t hurt, either.  This award goes to the blog that has the best-looking design while keeping it fully functional.  Nominations: Funsponge, Bloodthorne, Image Heavy, MMO Asylum, Flask Half-Empty

Most prolific blogger

This goes to the blogger who loves to write.  A lot.  Whether it’s a blogger who posts frequently or who pens long essays, the most prolific blogger has a lot to say and is unashamed to say it.  Nominations: Neurotic Girl, My Staff is Bigger than Yours, Game Delver, Noob Raider, Why I Game

Best blog name

The award says it all: This is for the blog that came up with the best blog name.  Sorry kids, Bio Break was taken.  Nominations: Stabby McStabStab, Kaw Kaw Get In The Bag!, The Diverted Muse, The 10th Level of Gaming Hell, Mighty Viking Hamster

RIFT, why do you have to go make all the other MMOs look so bad?

Dang, I guess it was a really, really good time to hop back on board the RIFT train.  Today Trion announced the game’s first expansion, Storm Legion, and it looks like an insane doozy.  It’s coming this fall, which gives me more than enough time to get my little Cleric up to spec.

There’s just so… much… to absorb with this expansion:

• Two new continents that will “triple” the game’s size and content
• Player and guild housing
• Level cap increase to 60
• 4 new souls (one for each calling)
• Tempest Bay dual-faction city
• 7 new dungeons
• 3 new raids
• 1 new Chronicle
• Massive colossus battles
• New crafting tier
• Capes
• Lots more of the existing stuff (rifts, mounts, artifacts, etc.)

I’m seriously, seriously impressed, because all this is being developed on top of Trion’s already hectic update publishing process.  From everything I hear, the game’s doing quite well for itself in the post-SWTOR industry (one news site said that the game has over a million active subs, but I haven’t seen confirmation of that anywhere else — seems a tad high).

As a returning player, what interests me the most is the new soul, the horror-themed continent, and (of course) player housing.  At this point, RIFT will have implemented pretty much every wish list item I’ve had for that game since launch — and it makes a lot of its contemporaries look stodgy in comparison.  Player housing!  Seriously!

It’s kind of funny watching twitter explode over this, like people are just rediscovering this game exists and remembering how awesome it is.  I feel a little bad for SWTOR (“hey guys!  We’re going to do an instance finder!  Guys?  Guys?”), but I think BioWare’s already feeling a fire under its feet to get new content out quicker.

This fall is going to be oh so crazy.  With LOTRO and RIFT’s expansion coming out then, The Secret World a couple months old, and the possibility of GW2′s launch, my dance card looks to be full and then some.

I don’t have anything else deeper to say about this other than the expansion might well have sealed my interest in this game through the summer.  I should go log in right now, as a matter of fact.  Hm…

Wrapping up the Newbie Blogger Initiative (month)

Holy crap.  Who would’ve thunk it?

The truth is, I was humbled, impressed, and awed at every turn this month.  It may well go down as one of my favorite months as a blogger ever.

The Newbie Blogger Initiative (like or hate the name, I couldn’t think of one better on the spot) was born of curiosity: Could we do it again?  We — as in the blogging community, not the Royal We — had a lot of fun putting together a similar endeavor in 2009, and I felt it might be time to give it another try.  I had a desire to see new blood in the blogging scene and a nagging sense of guilt that I am not always as involved in the community as I should be nor have I given it as much as it’s given to me.

Starting out a blog is hard.  It’s a lot like starting a serious exercise program: You can’t just fiddle about with it and hope to see results; you have to jump full-in, work through the pain and struggle of getting used to this new routine, and stick with it.  New blogs require strong, regular injections of content, and then they require exposure to gain readers.  The NBI was our answer to both of those: We would dole out advice as seasoned bloggers to the newcomers, and then lavish on them some link love.  It wasn’t a guaranteed formula for a successful blog, but it was a major leg-up for anyone who’d want it.

So I thought, why not?  I sketched down some thoughts and then started contacting bloggers, sometimes doing quite a bit of detective work to find an email address.  I thought that out of the 60 or so that I contacted, we’d get a score on board.  I had no idea if this idea would be poo-pooed or if it had merit, but I guess there was something to it, because just about everyone I emailed replied in the affirmative.

That’s when I knew we had a problem.  That was a lot of people to wrangle, and I didn’t want to assume a role of a meta-editor going around and checking up on homework assignments.  So I remembered that one enterprising member of the previous blogger initiative set up a forum for it, and I followed suit.  I tried to create a structure that would be easy to follow, plug into, and grow without my constant supervision.  I very much tried to stress that this was a collaborative project that wasn’t “mine” insomuch as “ours.”  I asked my friend Greg Moran to supply us with the ubiquitous NBI graphic you see plastered all over the place.  And then I invited everyone to head over there, giving them the loose guidelines of announcing the NBI on the first of the month, posting an advice article sometime during it, and linking to the new bloggers and veteran blogger advice posts at the end of it.

You can’t imagine what it felt like when May 1st rolled around and I stumbled out of bed to see the NBI launching all over the place.  People were enthusiastic about it, and enthusiasm is infectious.  By the end of the day we had our first batch of new(ish) bloggers signing in, and from then on it didn’t stop until the end of the month.

My contribution to all this was organizing and contacting — I’m not the social butterfly that some folks are, and I’m content to do the admin work so that others can just mingle.  I was delighted to see that many bloggers started contributing above and beyond as well, tackling ideas that I never thought of.  We had bloggers help cement our NBI Twitter hash tag, bloggers who were available constantly in the Q&A forum, bloggers who organized social media and contacts, bloggers who came up with fun challenges for the new folks, bloggers who constructed lists of all the contributions, and so on.

I’ll admit, I was worried, because practically none of this was under my control the second it started.  I had no idea if we were just going to annoy the heck out of all you guys with these NBI posts (and, hey, maybe we have).  I fretted that there might be a backlash or some bad apples trying to sour the experience for the people on the forums, but pretty much none of that happened.  The advice posts were varied, interesting, and incredibly informative.  Heck, I learned a lot this month from all you guys!  It’s fascinating to see the hobby of MMO blogging discussed this openly and without a lot of preachiness.

The best of all, however, was watching new, struggling, and lesser-known bloggers come out of the woodwork.  After seeing how many veteran bloggers signed on (and continued to sign on), I really had no idea what we would reap in terms of new writers in the field.  The answer was a metric ton and then some!  Geek bloggers, game bloggers, MMO-specific bloggers, photobloggers, humor bloggers, and just about anything you could think of emerged on the scene in May, and it filled my RSS reader to overflowing.  You could see the nervousness — and excitement — in many of these new bloggers, but they took the step to do it anyway and I’m incredibly proud they did so.  I don’t think they did it just for a traffic boost, but because they saw a warm and caring community that wasn’t going to ridicule them for trying, but do its best to help them on their way.

You new bloggers, you all keep up the great work.  I’ll be reading, I promise, and I think a lot of others will be as well.

I want to thank Greg Moran for the NBI graphic, the bloggers who took time and effort to participate, the auxilary sites that gave us lots of promotion, the podcasts that mentioned the NBI, and every reader who clicked on those links and visited a brand-new blog for the first time.  You all are why this was a terrific month.

I titled this post “Wrapping up the Newbie Blogger Initiative (month)” because I don’t think that this is the end of the NBI.  We’re leaving the forums open for continued promotion and conversations, not to mention a depository of great resources for new bloggers (and I’ll even pay for another month of ad-free hosting).  Any new blogger on the scene has free license to drop me a note and ask for a little promotion as well.

P.S. — Today is my 36th birthday.  To see the NBI succeed like this was one of the best gifts I’ve ever gotten.  Thank you all!