Utility is Dead (or is it?)

We've all heard of "bring the player, not the class" and are getting used to the fact that virtually every class and spec in WoW brings some kind of buff to the raid. Not all MMOs handle raid utility this way and in fact WoW didn't always either. I distinctly remember the time where you absolutely wanted a shadow priest or two in the raid for their mana regeneration, even though their DPS was sub-par. Survival hunters were only taken for their debuff and shamans switched groups mid-fight do chain Heroism on a DPS group.

When Casuals go 2D

Much talk can be found on the blogosphere about the meaning (and lack thereof) of the words casual and hardcore. Euripedes of Critical QQ wants to abolish these terms altogether while Arioch over on Clearcasting proposes a scale of seriousness instead. There used to be a discussion over at WoWRadio that casual and hardcore don't exist anymore because guilds like Ensidia often spend less time playing than your average raiding guild - just because they are so good.
Do you see the issue here?

Honesty Does Apply

I've said before that, unlike many other blogs, I will have strict quality control on my blogroll. Well, you might have noticed that the Greedy Goblin just disappeared from it. I used to think of that site as a clever businessman sharing his insights on the WoW economy. In today's post, however, he is proud of using lies and deceit to cheat a competitor out of his money.
His post, and the comments below it, got me thinking again about what anonymity does to people in online games and how one should behave in such situations.

Of Elephants and Tigers

I linked to an article by Tobold a while ago in which he argued that the MMORPG market might be saturated. It is true, we see various new MMOs launch with reasonably high sales numbers but a very low amount of long-term subscribers. Is Blizzard god and everybody else just fails at making games?

So long, Ghostcrawler, and thanks for all the fish.

We are gathered here today to bid farewell to our beloved Ghostcrawler, who will always be remembered for bringing customer interaction at Blizzard to a new level. Yesterday, at 8:51 pacific daylight time he passed away into the land of the silent.
Alright, obviously Ghostcrawler didn't die or I wouldn't make such a cheesy opening. He did post this, however:

"I always said that when my posting was doing more harm than good that maybe it was time to stop. I think I'll at least chill it out a little. I will continue to read the forums though. If you want to make sure the WoW developer see your feedback, this is still a good place to post."

- Ghostcrawler

The Wolpertinger Must Stay Free!

Those of you who live in the US and have a mind for seasonal events will likely have had encounters with pink elephants - excuse me, elekks - and maybe even the elusive wolpertinger. Some lucky Europeans had that opportunity too - for a few hours after the weekly maintenance. After that, these Brewfest quests were disabled again as it is apparently intended.

Comment Issues

Just a heads up - my comment provider (damn third parties :/) seems to have server problems. So if you don't see comments or an option to comment with - check back later.
When I have some spare time I will move this thing to my own server and be done with such stuff. Until then, please keep looking for comments- there are actually some good ones under my latest post ;)