A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away… a champion was born… he rolled a fortitude check, hearthed to an inn, tested out his emotes, and found the one ring to rule them all.
Welcome to /AFK, where I drop a list dump on you of the most interesting posts I read in the past week:
- “Captain… it’s a nuclear Wessel Weapon!” Werit reports.
- Why do we treat games so seriously? It’s a good question, and Frank picks up the ball and runs for a heart-warming touchdown.
- Champions’ devs dissect their own delay… and it’s a pretty revealing look as to what goes on with these major decisions.
- KTR snags a peek at a few pieces of Guild Wars 2 concept art. Shibby!
- MMeOw has an excellent article (part of a series) on building LOTRO’s Ered Luin. More lore and world building than you can shake a stick at!
- Mythic sent Greg at ToK some incredibly spiffy preview items for their new Land of the Dead patch.
- Kyle at Massively balances hype and ripe (for world-wide domination) over the new levels of Star Wars MMO fever that’s hitting the community.
- Wolfshead thinks he has solid proof that World of Warcraft is in decline — or will be very shortly.
- Customer service, Tseric-style, brought to you by Lum!
- Dusty gushes about how much LOTRO is taking care of the lower-level player in addition to end-gamers (unlike, say, WoW, who is two seconds away from putting its 1-60 game into a witness protection program).
- Frank thinks TOR won’t see the light of day until 2011… and he’s just peachy with that.
- Tipa’s pretty jazzed that Wizard 101 is finally letting adults be, well, adults.
- He’s a real Psychochild and he’s gonna get real wild… about LOTRO, as it turns out.
- I’m not saying that this is the most twisted thing anyone will do with Sims 3, but it’s probably close.
- Julian at KTR looks the the biggest obstacle to player-created content by searching the past.
- Pope has a pretty good essay on what constitutes “hating” in MMOs, and why it is easy to twist that into a hypocritcal statement.
- Finally, why are all the baddies bald? (Of course, let’s not forget folks like Captain Picard, either).
SPOTLIGHT ON… Moon Over Endor
I’m starting a new feature in our weekly /AFK — highlighting one blog that has caught my eye and wooed my black heart. This week’s “Spotlight On” is for the TOR blog Moon Over Endor, which not only has a terrific name (if lousy Ewok inhabitants), but solid and interesting content — such as a huge wrapup of E3 demo quotes from various news sources and an interesting find on the IMDb. Ayane is very thorough in picking through the info we’re getting on TOR right now, and I look forward to seeing how this blog progresses in the future.
Bio Break 
That Sims 3 link is downright disturbing!