Long Time No Game

I know lately I’ve gotten a little away from the gaming side of geekdom, what with most of my posts dealing with television in some respect or another.  That doesn’t mean I’m out of touch with the gaming blogosphere, though.  I read bunches of gaming-centric posts daily, so I thought I’d point out a few of the more interesting articles I’ve come across lately.  Share the love, ya know?

• There’s a reason I love Wolfshead Online: He uses nice graphics and in-depth analysis to point out what works and does in MMO development.  This week, he tackles arbitrary group size and difficulty scaling.
• Matticus talks about a topic near and dear to my heart because I’ve experienced it from both sides: How to Deal with “Main Switching” in MMO Guilds.
• Gordon of We Fly Spitfires makes me want my Dwarf Shaman and/or Mage now and not when Cataclysm hits.
• Tobold gave his 5-year anniversary review of World of Warcraft.
• Hatch really got to me when he made the bold claim that Jaina Proudmore would become the Lich Queen after the Icecrown Citadel raid in WoW.
• Keen and Graev contemplate the worlds we inhabit in MMOs.
• Tipa of West Karana made me yearn for a Cthulhu-based MMO with her comic about Wizard 101.  I don’t even really play Wizard 101, but for some reason, her quest for the clockwork spider had me spellbound.
• Ixobelle tried his hand at raid designing, failed to land a job, and blogged about it.  It’s a good read. And download his raid dungeon .PDF; it’s really well-made and fun to go over.
• Ferrel writes about how a change in playstyle, particularly from hardcore, can take its toll.
• And Syp just keeps making me want to play Fallen Earth even after I tell him to stop.  He’s mean like that.
• Dickie of Rainbow MMO points out that we all leave a piece of ourselves in our MMO avatars.
• And finally, Tesh ponders what we do when all our goals/needs are met in games.  Where do we go from here?