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http://tobolds.blogspot.com/ - A blog mostly about MMORPG ( Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games ) and other games I'm currently playing. Please read my Terms of Service

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Welfare cooking skill
Pretty regularly Blizzard nerfs some challenge in World of Warcraft and makes something which was previously hard to get a lot easier. That usually makes the people who couldn't do the hard achievement happy, but those who already did it on hard mode unhappy. And I must admit I'm not quite happy ...
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Gravity on the tank ratio
Gravity from pwnwear , a Death Knight tanking blog, asked on my input on the ratio of tanks to other classes in a guild . Basically the problem is that in a 25-man raid encounters require only 2 tanks (8% of players in the raid), or at maximum 3 tanks (12%). But in a 10-man raid or 5-man heroic, ...
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Thought for the day: Persistence part 2
Even a MMORPG ends one day, either by us quitting or by the servers shutting down. If we don't play to enjoy the moment, but play to achieve a certain level and quality of gear, what exactly remains from all of our efforts the day the servers shut down? Tobold's MMORPG Blog
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Phishing alert: Jade Tiger e-mails
Please be warned that today somebody swamped the internet with an extremely well made phishing mail, which looks very much like a genuine mail from Blizzard, and promises you a Jade Tiger in-game pet if you just fill out a survey. Of course to do so you'll have to type your Battle.net login and ...
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Dragon Age: Origins - Review
FTC disclaimer: I do have a material relationship with EA Bioware insofar as they did send me a free review copy of Dragon Age: Origins. Nevertheless the copy of the game that I actually played was a “Digital Deluxe” version bought via a Steam pre-order, thus including all existing additional ...
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Thought for the day: Persistence
It is claimed that a MMORPG is fundamentally different from a single-player RPG in that the MMO game has a persistent world: When you log off, the world continues to exist and things happen while you are away. In a single-player game the world freezes when you save it, and starts exactly there ...
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Mirkwood vs. Cataclysm
tobolds.blogspot.com — Technically I am subscribed to both Lord of the Rings Online and World of Warcraft, only that the LotRO subscription is the "lifetime" deal. So I should be playing both games, and I should be equally interested in both both upcoming expansions, ... (more) Mirkwood vs. Cataclysm
Do not buy gold guides!
tobolds.blogspot.com — Earlier this year a fellow blogger named Markco asked me to have a look at his WoW economics blog, and whether I would allow him to do a guest post on this blog. I had a look at his blog, which looked interesting enough, and allowed his guest post, ... (more) Do not buy gold guides!
How big is the US market for MMORPGs?
Bigeyez alerted me to a Gamasutra article quoting a NPD study saying: "14 percent of U.S. consumers have a subscription to an online game like World of Warcraft." The US has about 308 million citizens, so if this study counted each of them as a possible "consumer", there would be over 42 million ...
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Spice of variety
Let me tell you how a typical play session of mine goes: Usually I first log on those of my World of Warcraft characters with a daily cooldown, like the alchemist transforming a rare gem into an epic gem once a day. Send the epic gem to my jewel crafter, who not only cuts the gem and sends it on ...
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Paladin charger
My paladin reached level 40 today. As I had read that epic mounts are available at level 40 since patch 3.2, I looked around for the quest that would give my paladin his epic charger. Turns out Blizzard has been lazy: You can *buy* epic riding skill at level 40 as paladin. But if you want to do ...
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Thought for the day: Entitlement
Game by Night Chris asks whether players are wrong to feel entitlement to easy gameplay, fast leveling without grind, and other luxury features we didn't have when we played Everquest a decade ago. But is that really the only entitlement players feel, and is it only the noobs as Chris says that ...
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WoW in space
Massively has an interesting video preview of Allods Online , a game that looks remarkably similar to World of Warcraft, but with more SciFi elements and space ships. What is remarkable about that game is that it looks pretty good, and will be Free2Play, which would make it basically the second ...
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New MMORPG will come out in February 2010
The headline is deliberately obscure, because I'd like to make a point about expectations. What do you think if you hear that there will be a new MMORPG coming out in February of next year? Normally the reaction to such news is rather positive, and the hype starts spinning into overdrive. But in ...
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My material relationship with EA Bioware
Okay, I'm nearly 3 weeks early, as the Federal Trade Commission guidelines on disclosure of material relationships between bloggers and companies only kick in December 1st. Nevertheless I wanted to let you, and the FTC, know that my review copy of Dragon Age: Origins just arrived by mail. This ...
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Modern publicity warfare
According to user reviews in various places, like Metacritic, IGN, or Amazon, Modern Warfare 2 is one of the worst games in history, with a user review score hovering very close to the absolute bottom. At the same time press reviews regularly score the game above 90%, as one of the best games of ...
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What can we expect from RPG storytelling?
tobolds.blogspot.com — Bigeyez sent me a funny chart he found at Hellforge , which shows how much the stories of Bioware RPGs are similar to each other. Somebody posted that chart on the Mass Effect 2 forums, and got an angry response from a Bioware writer , defending the ... (more) What can we expect from RPG storytelling?
Kudos to Blizzard for honesty
Via MMO-Champion I saw this Blizzard "blue post" on pugging in 3.3: Just a couple of observations from our point of view: 1) Players who don't pug dramatically underestimate the number of people who do. 2) Players often assume every realm has the same dynamics that their realm has. Pugging is ...
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Thought for the day: EA layoffs
tobolds.blogspot.com — EA is usually the first company mentioned when people complain about game developers making unimaginative bad sequels instead of innovative good games. EA, due to sheer size, is also the company whose games are getting pirated the most. Now EA is ... (more) Thought for the day: EA layoffs
World of Microtransactions, and how we got there
tobolds.blogspot.com — If you consider what the most likely business model for future MMORPGs is, you might be surprised to realize that the most likely scenario is that you will pay for that future MMORPG three times: Once for buying the game, a second time in the form of ... (more) World of Microtransactions, and how we got there
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