What be this “success” we’ve heard so much about? Be it fun, sales, lasting memories or the sheer fact that a game made it to launch in an industry that chokes its young to death on a regular basis? One thing is for certain: You are successful just for reading Bio Break. Lesser mortals have tried and fallen dead on the spot from the exposure.
Welcome back to /AFK, my weekly roundup of interesting blog posts and pertinent quotes:
- Ex Post Ninja — Metrics for success
“We’ve seen the game launch strong, but MMOs are a marathon, not a sprint.”
- West Karana — DDO is having a birthday party and you’re invited… to spend money
“But when they offer a special player event and then decide for no real reason to hide part of it behind a paywall, well… that’s just being mean.”
- The Common Sense Gamer — Rift: Don’t worry, gamers have short memories
“I tell ya…it was just awesome to see the balance between MMO gamer selfishness and community goals finally reached.”
- Combat Archaeology — Captain’s log: there and back again
“On the whole, the game has begun to feel much more like Star Trek, and that’s even before I’ve played the new missions.”
- Epic Slant — What to love about Rift
“To me, Rift marks the death of the chore-reward-centric MMORPG. This is innovation to me.”
- Dragonchasers — Rift factions as sports franchises
“At first I found it really silly…why should I care what someone says about a fictitious faction in a video game?”
- Multiplaying — Well given I’m 507 in the queue…
“As for the Rift system.. what can I say? It’s damn near perfection. I’ve literally tried looking for things I didn’t like or had issues with, and I’ve thus far been unsuccessful.”
- Levelcapped — Merry Riftmas!
“Trion has really gone above and beyond what we normally see from developers, and the game itself has some major selling points as well that allow it to stand out from the steady stream of ho-hum that we’ve had to endure in the MMO space over the past few years.”
- Overly Positive — The silly setup of failure
“They make forum threads predicting doom and gloom, blog about how the next best thing isn’t quite as good as sliced bread, and are always quick to insert an oppositional, Eeyore-like shrug into conversations that excitedly talk about what’s coming up.”
- Hunter’s Insight — The arthritic dog
“It really did surprise me that even though Arenanet set out to make Guild Wars 2, they left Guild Wars to rot.”
- MMOSH — Momento mori, Hawley
“Most of all, I don’t want to kill the guild with my stupid sense of humour and inability to Just. Shut. Up.”
- Stabbed Up — Rift: Greater than the sum of its parts
“Rift has gone viral, will go more viral still and in a genre where WoW has held 90% of market share in NA and EU for a long time there will henceforth be two major players.”
- Stylish Corpse — Sucker for a happy ending
“What only other introverts seem to understand, however, is that this doesn’t make me unsociable or anti-social — quite the contrary. I’m extremely sociable, it’s just that my terms for it aren’t the same as those of your average extrovert.”
- Lowered Explectations — Spectator sports: The Rift dent
“I personally feel Rift COULD be the first million subber game, if they keep their cool, work on the games strong points and hold on tight to their player base they have created.”
Bio Break 