Starcraft MMO by 2009?

Uh...exqueze me? Baking powder?

Did you say a Starcraft MMO in 2009?

As in...(and I'm no math expert)... like in a year?

New reports seem to indicate that the much talked about Starcraft MMO will be out sometimes in 2009. For real.

Ok, I know you guys at Blizzard are ambitious and all, and seriously, why rest on your laurels when you already have an MMO that pretty much pwns every other game out there in terms of number of players, exposure and kajillions of dollars income. But...but my Gawd! Give a guy a chance to try out AoC or at least PoTBS for a little longer. I mean, do you people really want me to spend the rest of my life with the after-image of an MMO screen permanently etched onto my retinas? Or corneas? Or whatever the hell you call those things in my head I use to see with but can't seem to close because I'm only 4 bars away from leveling?

(Was that last sentence a question? Do I even know anymore?)

Zookeeper, those monkeys are killing each other!

A gamer told us about a relatively new MMO the other day called Zu Online. Currently in open beta, this gamer (we call her 'female-girl-gamer-lady-woman') said she had recently quit WoW because it was taking up too much of her life. Her boyfriend was getting angry, her child would go missing for hours and come back with geological samples for some reason, and even her co-workers started commenting on how she had become "Much more axe-wielding than usual."

To make a long story short (too late), she found Zu and thought it was great. Sort of a pre-Burning Crusade version of WoW, Zu is based on a Chinese fantasy novel. Though developed by an Asian company (pagoda Asian, not mosque-Asian), it's offered by IGG, an American company. We haven't played it yet, but from what we've seen, it looks pretty good. We just wanted to let you know about it case, you know, World of Warcraft is taking over your life.

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to my underground lair.

As if the threat of addiction, loss of sleep and those wierd dreams weren't enough, there is now a potential new threat to all you MMO gamers out there: TERRORISTS!

According to a report that has something to do with the Director of National Intelligence, (Not the same guy who is responsible for high school students not knowing in which century the civil war happened. We're talking about another kind of intelligence.) government spies may soon be infiltrating an MMO near you in order to find terrorists among us.

No. We're not kidding. According to the report, the intelligence community is working on developing software to identify those nasty terrorists who aren't just content to bring their wanton destruction to the real world, but the virtual ones as well.

Yeah, we know what you're thinking. And you're right. If you want to avoid your house being raided at 3:00 in the morning by black-clad, submachine gun toting guys in gas-masks, you should probably stop doing all the bad stuff you're doing. This means ditching the epic suicide vest you found in that desert instance, leaving any guild that rhymes with 'Jihad' and resisting the urge to shout "The streets will flow with the blood of the infidels" whenever you get shafted by that healer in your guild who always "just happens" to be doing something else whenever you really need help. Kyle, you dick.

As for us. Say goodbye to old avatar Entaro McKickass. And say hello to our new avatar: Ayatollah Assahollah.

The Doctors say he has a 50 percent chance of making it. But there's only a 10 percent chance of that.

Recently, a panel of MMO insiders convened at the Game Developers Conference 08 to discuss the future of MMO's. Apparently, much of the conversation revolved around the current, WoW dominated state of MMO's. As we've known for a while, every MMO that's been released after WoW has barely been able to attract attention. This was pointed out by Jack Emmert of Cryptic studios who pointed out that only LoTRO has been able to reach the 100,000 subscriber mark since it's post-WoW release.

Just another reason why we think the state of MMO's today is that of a subculture. There are some avid practitioners, but the medium has yet to reach the popular appeal of console gaming, film or television. We think some serious changes need to be made for MMO's to reach those levels. And apart from someone inventing a holo-deck, prospects for that happening in the near future are not great.

There is no spoon.

We came across this movie traler recently. It was posted on YouTube only a few days ago, but it already has 40,000+ hits. It's a documentary about MMO gamers, and how their games have changed their lives.

The trailer and promotional material give the impression that the movie looks at the MMO phenomenon, and apparently makes some disturbing observations. Any gamer since The Legend of Zelda knows how intense and time-consuming a video game can be. The fact that MMO's are now simulating entire worlds, nay, virtual realities, make them that much more immersive. If films, art or literature are escapist in that they allow the consumer to experience a fictitious reality only accessed by using the product, MMO's are combining multiple elements from numerous transportive media into a single, glossy package. Game addiction? We've always thought it was not only possible, but actual. We've known a lot of gamers (and not just MMO gamers) who's lives have been consumed by their favorite pass-time.

MMO's, in the end, may just be the newest, shiniest, noisy things that appeal to our simian nature. Transportive entertainment that allows our brains to inhabit a place that only exists in our brains.

But how is that different than anything else?

I don't want you guys using words with no meaning.

Now joining the ranks of truthiness, crisitunity and irregardless (we hope not), Meriam-Webster's dictionary has released the word of the year for 2007. Are you ready for it? Here it comes:

w00t!

Yes, that hybrid of 'Wow, loot!' that is so commonly heard voiced by gamers around the world (or at least on a few of the internets) whenever they want to express joy, 'w00t' is now a word. Sort of.

We have our doubts as to how long the word will be around, but we are glad to see there other people in the world who are at least cognizant of some of the gaming world's peculiarities.

Now, if only those noobs weren't afk so much, they could get a few dings and maybe help us with crowd control.

Excuse Me While I Whip This Out

So this blog is basically about MMORPG's, virtual worlds and the stuff that comes with them. And though we like to think about the gaming world's intersection with Plato's allegory of the cave, Rene Descartes's malevolent deceiver and whether or not one should choose the blue pill or the red pill, we're not just eggheads who can't appreciate creativity and funny.

We first saw Red vs. Blue a couple of months ago, and though it's mainly for Halo fans, we still love it. Not only that, but this could be the future of film-making. I mean, no sets, no crews, no locations, what's not to like? Check out the Halo 3 Beta Video.

Gamer: "I play with real people."
Therapist: "Have you met them, face to face?"
Gamer: "I hear them. It's good enough for the blind."

And for you World of Warcraft fans who's guild duties take up more of your time than you want to admit to anyone who isn't in your guild (you know who you are), there is always The Guild. This great little series is a little window into the lives of people who's gaming lives vaguely resemble real lives.

Enjoy.