SOE passed along a bit of concept art to us this week. Showing a serrated scimitar, the file was named “Wrath of Nature 1280 x 1024.jpg”. They provided no additional information on the subject, save to say that the epics will be going live next week.
Now, for those of you old enough to remember, “Wrath of Nature” was the name of the effect on the old druid epic, the Nature Walker‘s Scimitar. Are we looking at concept art for an updated version of the old druid epic? You tell me:
I just received email notice from Pure West Films that they’ve got now the trailer for Second Skin online. The YouTube version is embedded below, or for higher-resolution Quicktime versions you can visit their site at www.secondskinfilm.com. For those of you who were at last year’s Fan Faire in Las Vegas, they were the folks filming just prior to the final night’s banquet and costume contest.
The documentary follows seven MMORPG gamers and explores the blurring lines between the virtual and real. It’s a finalist for the South by Southwest film festival, and from what I gather they’ll find out early next week if they’ve made it in. I wish them the best of luck.
And just as an extra tidbit, look for a shot of the EQII community’s own Brasse the Dwarf at 2:06!
Today I want to talk a bit about exploits, and to do that I think it is important to first define what an exploit is from my viewpoint. After all, what I consider an exploit might be different from what you consider an exploit. To me an exploit is any bug which happens to positively effect the player. This could be anything from some sequence of selling and buying back that results in duplicate coin being created to a typo that is allowing for those level 2 crafted bracers to be sold for 87 gold instead of 87 copper. This tends to happen once in a while, but for the most part I think it is somewhat rare. A majority of bugs tends to adversely effect the player, not help them. I also don’t count things like hacking the client, or writing bots as exploits, since it seems like those actions are fairly well established as being against the games terms of service, and to me seem far more like cheating.
You read about them all the time: raiding guilds. Silently, you lurk the forums of these uberguilds trying to read about the latest kill they’ve managed to handle, to live perhaps a little vicariously through their exploits from afar. Publically, you might poo-poo the drama or attitude surrounding these “1% of 1%” players. You may even rail against them on forums. At the end of the day, a part of you may wish you could be them.
Does the above paragraph describe everyone? No, absolutely not. There certainly are a lot of players in MMO’s today who would love nothing more than to see the current raiding model going the way of the dodo bird. Yet, even then, there seems to be more and players who take up raiding each and every week. These aren’t the hardcore, all night every night raiders we might hear about. These are average folks with relatively average lives with relatively limited time to play…who just want to see a different type of gameplay.
I call them Casual Raiders. I consider myself one. What’s the difference?
In an apparently strange turn of events, we’ve been seeing a ton of hits coming in from the SomethingAwful forums. Turns out that some members of their “Goons” hit upon our “Ten Reasons You Should Buy Everquest II” posting from a few months back as part of the recruiting effort for the local Everquest II chapter of the Goon Squad (And a big CWG welcome to guild “What” on Unrest server).
In any regard, they have one of the most comprehensive overviews of the basic lore, class descriptions, and overall gameplay of Everquest II I’ve seen in any one place. Take a look for yourself.
While perusing the EQ2Players forums this morning, I came across this little gem of a “guide” written by Estean from the Butcherblock server, who tends to lead a lot of open or “pick-up” raids. Whether you play Everquest II or Warcraft, I advise you to read through this list (which I’ve recopied below the break). I’ll admit that I got a chuckle out of some of his descriptions of raiders to avoid:
The Early Bird – This is a person who leaves the raid early – They have no concept of time or how long a raid will take. Many times the early bird leaves when there are problems with a mob. A person who does this consistently is cancer to a PuG raid. Identify quickly and Chemo that cancer quick.
The Over Aggroer – MA’s mean nothing to this clown. The parse is everything. If they constantly grab agro from the tank, well the tank sucks according to them. They will not change their playing style and can often wipe the raid. Often these idiots will cast huge damage nukes/ca’s at the beginning of the fight with no regard for agro.
It made me think, though. Do I ever fit one of these problematic archetypes? Do any of my guildmates?
Random thought of the day:
Ever notice how some of the biggest self-proclaimed authorities on MMO’s often have no characters higher than level 35 in any particular game? I’ve been reading a lot of new blogs and even paid fansites lately where the writers are involved in 27 different MMO’s right now, but couldn’t properly explain what a 2 year old zone looks like because they spend no more than five hours per game every third week.
Follow-up thought:
(Must remember to level up past 35 tonight. 😛 )
I’ve been involved in a running discussion with a few old folks today regarding Master I spell scrolls in Everquest II. A couple of questions were raised during the discussion that I thought were compelling enough to inspire me to bring in a slider wider audience:
Ok, let ‘er rip. Start your engines and get to click-clacking on those keyboards. I want to hear opinions here.
The Kendricke Tracker 
