July 2009 MMO Blog Roundup

This is a semi-regular feature article in the Bright Hub MMO channel. If you run a blog or fan site that focusses on MMOs, and would like to join our program, send a message to Michael Hartman, the ME of the Bright Hub MMO channel. We will review your site for quality, activity, and applicability of content. If we accept you into the program, we will feature a teaser about your favorite blog post in our monthly roundup.

If you enjoy this article, make sure you read the May 2009 MMO Blog Roundup as well.

Just to avoid confusion, let me be clear. Each section is named for the blog itself. The next major title is the name of the article, and you can click it to read the full article. All you see here are snippets from the articles. You will want to check out the great blogs featured here for the full information.

Boobs and Beefcake in Game Design

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Particularly in graphical games, it is perfectly reasonable for people to want their character to be attractive or even hot. Some people may even want to create a persona that drips with sex appeal. But why is this usually only an option for female avatars? Why can’t someone make a really buff, rippling, super manly, romance novel cover model looking guy?

Housing in World of Warcraft

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I recently re-activated one of my old account of an old MMO (gasp, I know!) I used to play. It was a game I was highly addicted to back in my college days that rhymes with “sminal smantasy smeleven”. Anyways, playing the game for a few hours, it got me wondering about Player Housing, and how it would work in the World of Warcraft.

I Am Become Death

Sendoku isn’t Vishnu, but as a newly minted Death Knight, subject of the Lich King, he is a harbinger of death, one who uses terror like a madman’s cudgel and fear like a torturer’s scalpel.

Early in his career, he was told that the hunger gnawing at his soul could only be sated by killing. His very first fight set the tone for his existence, as he was told to fight a fellow initiate to the death. The later massacre of scores of soldiers was only a mild escalation in his ultimate task to eradicate all life on Azeroth under the direction of the Lich King.

He is not quite alive, having been reanimated to serve in thrall to the Lich King, nor is he truly dead or undead. He and his brethren are at least somewhat mortal, as some have not survived the Lich King’s war efforts. So he’s understandably confused about his existence, and the suggestion to focus on obedience to the will of the Lich King and the tasks at hand undoubtedly help efforts to ignore exisistential musing.