If You Want Something Done Right. . .

This week I accepted a position as Associate Game Designer with Blizzard Entertainment.  Specifically, I will be designing quests for World of Warcraft, Blizzard's MMORPG based on the popular Warcraft series.  In addition to my duties as Quest Designer, I will also be expected to contribute to helping design the end game content for World of Warcraft.  The reason I am sharing this information (besides the fact that I have a masochistic love of reading rants and flames about myself) is because I know that the fans of this site are hardcore MMORPG players.  The readers of this site have also come to know my personal opinions on what constitutes a fun gaming experience versus what feels like a complete waste of time or poorly designed encounter.

You've all read my opinions on such things as tedious key camps, obvious time sinks devoid of any story or linear narrative, quests which reward the lucky over the skilled and quest rewards which are out of synch with the amount of time and effort required to complete them.  I hope that my association with World of Warcraft will serve to comfort MMORPG fans that "one of us" is on the other side of the fence, looking out for the interests of the player.

The collective vision behind World of Warcraft is what really won me over.  The folks working on the game are focused on making the world of Azeroth fun for all kinds of players, ranging from the casual gamer to hardcore people like you and me.  To put it bluntly, they don't want you reading a book or watching TV while playing their game at the same time.  The game is captivating enough where other distractions aren't necessary.

Blizzard's desire to provide well designed high-end content will prove to be a breath of fresh air for the readers of this site.  Unfortunately, I cannot go into much detail at this time but I can say that there are ideas being discussed for the hardcore, end-game player which are nothing short of groundbreaking.  You guys, the fans of this site, know how discerning I am when it comes to "uber" content in a game.  Trust me, you have much to look forward to.

And to top it all off, the game simply looks amazing.  I was blown away by what I saw.  MMORPG fans have some very exciting things dawning on the horizon.

So with all that is going on with me, you'll have to excuse any lapses in updates to the site here.  I will try my hardest to give you slackers something to read while you should be working.  But in the meantime, there's a whole world of NPC's that need to learn the words "cacksugger" and "mo faka" and the like. . .although something tells me I'm already in trouble with the boss.

--Tig

Delivered As Promised

From Left to Right:  Nexona, Xygoz, Phara Dar and Druushk

Sometimes you just have to design your own high end encounter when you find the ones in the game lacking a certain critical element.  No, by critical element I do not mean rare drops off of rare spawns, I do not mean rare drops off of green mobs, I do not mean the neccesity to raise otherwise useless tradeskills, I do not mean long boring camps, I do not mean endless farming.  By critical element I mean the one *true* critical element that belongs in every game: Fun.

Fun.  F-U-N. . .such a simple concept yet apparently hard to grasp for some.  So rather than waste another night doing the long, tedious bullshit to increase our *uber status* in SoL (a.k.a. "quick, stall 'em, this shit ain't finished yet but sure glad we made the Christmas deadline") we headed off to Veeshan's Peak where it's easy to feel like a God by simply pressing F8 and A.  Have we cleared VP before?  Dozens of times.  Do we need loot from VP?  Not really.  Is killing a 32k dragon a challenge?  Not in the least.  But where the fun came in was setting the goal of posting that Money Shot (tm) for you cacksuggers to enjoy.

Think outside the box. . .

Evil Empire Inc.

A new section dedicated to maintaining our reputation as the assholes you love to hate on The Nameless. . .

First off, how do you know when Legacy of Steel is raiding in Acrilya Caverns?

Next up, as Guildleader I am often responsible for handling *community relation tells* such as these:

Stalkers, Wanna-be's and Unoriginal Bastards

I don't even know what to make of that one. . .or the one above it for that matter. . .

Guide Staff Quote of the Day

Dedicated to the Stalkers. . .

Quote of the Day

Dead As Intended

Working As Intended?

Fix your goddamn buggy bullshit half-assed encounters.  The amount of time we dedicated to get our keys to see this guy die and take a turn at the Emperor is just sick.  To finally see Blood die only to have the ENTIRE raid DT'd from anywhere in the room was simply an insult.  Blood dies, there are two earrings on the corpse, yet no matter where you are in the room, the Emperor DT's.  So congrats rot on those.  It's cheap enough to make a mob DT in the first place.  But to have his agro radius extend to the entire room is ridiculous.  So let me get this straight -- and this is how you guys envisioned this in San Diego:  You spend months farming keys to get up to the room.  Months farming Shissar Bane weapons (and the recipe is where?).  You kill Blood while dealing with 8 other snakes in the room.  And immediately after that fight you're supposed to engage the DEATHTOUCHING-FROM-ANYWHERE-IN-THE-ROOM Emperor along with the 8 snakes?  Whoever came up with this sheer *fisting* of an encounter can go fuck themselves.  Do me a favor so I don't waste my guild's time on this kind of jackass shit-fest again, send me an email at tigole@legacyofsteel.net when you decide to A) Implement an encounter that wasn't designed by a retarded chimp chained to a cubicle B) Get a Quality Assuarance Department C) Actually beta test the fucking thing and D) Patch it live.  And please for god's sake -- do it in the order I laid out for you.  Don't worry, I won't charge you a consulting fee on that one.  And for good luck you might as well E) Pull your heads out of your asses.  While you're at it rename the game to BetaQuest since you've used up you're alotted false advertising karma on the Bazaar and user interface scam of '01.

Fix the Emperor encounter.  Fix Seru.  Rethink your time-sink bullshit.  Fix all the buggy motherfucking ring encounters (I suggest you let whoever made the Burrower one do this since that dude apparently laid off the crack the rest of you were smoking).  Fix the VT key quest.  Fix VT (just guessing it's fucked up considering your track record).  Don't have the resources to fix this stuff?  Move the ENTIRE Planes of Power team over to fixing Shadows of Luclin AND DO IT NOW.  If you don't fix Luclin, you jackassess will be the only ones playing the Planes of Power.