My regular Guild Wars 2 community round-up at GuildMag is now online. The big talking point for a lot of sites was all of the information we got from Chris Whiteside’s exhaustive session at Reddit, which went on for several hours. That, plus all the usual blog posts, articles, videos, podcasts, and fan fiction.
November 30, 2012
This week in Guild Wars 2
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November 25, 2012
At the intersection of “Bronies” and wargaming
At what many would expect to be a quiet, uninhabited intersection you find the World of Tanks mod for My Little Pony fans:
My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, a relatively new TV show that’s garnered a huge geek audience, is now invading the most non-pony of places: World of Tanks. Modder RelicShadow has combined several of his and others’ modifications for WoT into a definitive 5GB overhaul package. The result? A ground-up transformation of World of Tanks in which ponies pervade every inch of the battlefield.
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November 23, 2012
This week in Guild Wars 2
My weekly Guild Wars 2 community round-up at GuildMag is now online. There was a very wide range of reactions on the Lost Shores event and the new content that was released last weekend, plus all the usual blog posts, articles, videos, podcasts, and fan fiction.
November 16, 2012
This week in Guild Wars 2
My usual Guild Wars 2 community round-up at GuildMag is now online. This week is all about the upcoming Lost Shores event, plus all the usual blog posts, articles, videos, podcasts, and fan fiction.
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November 9, 2012
This week in Guild Wars 2
My regular Guild Wars 2 community round-up at GuildMag is now online. This week features the last of the Halloween special event coverage and some speculation on what next week’s Lost Shores content release will bring us, plus all the usual blog posts, articles, videos, podcasts, and fan fiction.
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November 2, 2012
This week in Guild Wars 2
The post-Halloween edition of my Guild Wars 2 community round-up at GuildMag is now online. With so many posts being tied to the various phases of the Halloween special event, the weekly summary is much shorter than usual (but there’s still more than 80 blog posts, videos, podcasts, and fan fiction items).
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October 26, 2012
This week in Guild Wars 2
The Halloween edition of my regular community round-up at GuildMag is now online. This week’s collection includes lots of Halloween items, plus all the usual blog posts, videos, podcasts, and fan fiction.
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October 19, 2012
This week in Guild Wars 2
My usual community round-up at GuildMag is now online. This week’s collection includes lots of speculation about the first seasonal event for Halloween, Pink Day in LA (that’d be “Lion’s Arch”, not “Los Angeles”), plus all the usual blog posts, videos, podcasts, and fan fiction.
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October 12, 2012
This week in Guild Wars 2
My weekly community round-up at GuildMag has been posted. This week’s collection includes all the usual blog posts, videos, podcasts, and fan fiction.
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October 7, 2012
Libertarian propaganda appears even in video games like Minecraft!
Those evil Ayn Rand types are fitting their loathsome philosophy into everything! It’s even shown up in otherwise wholesome areas like video games:
I just realized that this has been nibbling at the back of my mind for some time: Minecraft may be a very subtle (and probably unintentional) piece of propaganda that could corrupt people into believing in Objectivist or libertarian/anarchocapitalist ideas. For those not familiar with political theory in this vein, one of the popular libertarian metaphors is that of resources as sand on a beach, and that there are so many grains of sand that no one should need to share, because they can just go out and get more sand.
Nowhere is this ideology more present than in Minecraft. You are a single individual, gendered male, who is placed randomly in a wilderness. You are able to fashion tools from only that which surrounds you. At first you can only build primitive tools and live in a shitty shack, but as you work more and more, you can eventually dwell in a castle. All you have to do is work hard and know what to do.
The metaphor gets even worse when we factor in monsters and villagers. Monsters are like socialist parasites — they come to attack you, and literally to parasite themselves off of you, but many of them — especially creepers — destroy your projects in trying to get at you. Think of Howard Roarke’s courtroom speech in The Fountainhead. The player in Minecraft is that quintessential builder-architect who discovered fire and was hated by others. Meanwhile, the villages — people living together in communities — can never aspire to the kinds of feats that the player can, and they exist only as resources to be exploited. There is no moral penalty for demolishing them or for stealing.
I’m not saying Notch intends this to be the reading of Minecraft, but it’s there and it unsettles me.
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October 5, 2012
This week in Guild Wars 2
My regular community round-up at GuildMag has been posted. This week’s collection includes information on the Legendary weapons that have begun to appear in-game, details on the live development process, and all the usual blog posts, videos, podcasts, and fan fiction.
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October 3, 2012
One for the (male) gaming geeks
A few Twitter updates from “Muskrat John” Kovalic (of Dork Tower and Munchkin fame):
Craigslist: “Topless female DM needed for Adult D&D bachelor party.” THAC0 indeed… http://t.co/JVZwVHzT (via @whisperjeff)
— Blue Czech Mark (@muskrat_john) October 3, 2012
“Experience in 3.5 preferable.” God, I love the fact that they are edition-specific.
— Blue Czech Mark (@muskrat_john) October 3, 2012
“Must be able to provide a picture including the face and body (No nudes please.)” <<— LAST thing you want, seeking a topless female DM.
— Blue Czech Mark (@muskrat_john) October 3, 2012
@muskrat_john I think that is a good thing. Using 3.5 means no-one will be tempted to grapple.
— GragSmash@kind.social (@GeeCaret2) October 3, 2012
@muskrat_john What I'm most confused about is why they want her topless when you wouldn't be able to see her behind the screen.
— Morbus Iff (@morbusiff) October 3, 2012
“Each of us are gentlemen and will treat the Dungeon Master with the utmost of respect.” <— Which would be a first for D&D…
— Blue Czech Mark (@muskrat_john) October 3, 2012
https://twitter.com/GeekyGeekyWays/status/253497061922721793
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September 29, 2012
He comes not to praise Mists of Pandaria but to bury it
A harsh review of the latest World of Warcraft expansion in the PC World gaming column:
As I’ve played the new WoW expansion this week and journeyed through the lands of Pandaria I’ve been struck by two seemingly contradictory facts: Blizzard has crafted the best expansion for World of Warcraft yet, and if I didn’t have a ton of friends playing the game I would likely never open up WoW again.
As if to stick the knife in further, he closes the column by praising some direct competitor games for various aspects, but one particular game comes in for the highest accolades:
This year has seen the release Guild Wars 2, Star Wars: The Old Republic, and The Secret World. Of those 3 only Guild Wars 2 has had any real success, but all three of them manage to innovate on WoW’s formulae in interesting ways. The Old Republic and The Secret World both tell better stories more ably than WoW did at the time (though with Mists of Pandaria it seems like Blizzard is catching up) and Guild Wars 2 manages to do something even more impressive.
It created an MMO I want to play not just with my friends, but with anyone.
When I see another player out questing in WoW I’m annoyed. I’m expecting them to grab my quest items, enemies and other resources for themselves. In theory I can group up with at least some of these players, but in practice they usually steal my kills and run off before I can click on them and ask them to join. Even if I do manage to do so, they have little incentive to join me; they’ve already gotten credit for the quest and have no reason to help me.
Guild Wars 2, on the other hand, rewards cooperation at every turn. Every player that contributes to a kill gets loot and experience even if they aren’t grouped together. Every player is rewarded for contributing to quest objectives even if other players contributed more. Every time another player shows up on your screen in PvE, that player can only help you.
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September 28, 2012
This week in Guild Wars 2
My weekly community round-up at GuildMag has been posted. The game is now a month old, and the community is still posting game-related blog posts, videos, podcasts, and fan fiction at a blistering pace.
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