Posted on 2008 under News |
31
Mar
Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Odds and ends
Okay, so technically Waaagh! is a Warhammer Online blog, but we'll forgive Syp this time, if only because S/he writes a pretty good article about choosing your character's name. The first part of it is, to me at least, good common sense. Don't choose a name you'll regret or a name that looks overly bad to other people. Naming after real life celebrities can get a bit tired. Naming your character "something naughty" is probably just going to make most people think you haven't cleared puberty yet. And yeah, it might be funny to call your character Rickroll NOW, but when Rickrolling is the next "All Your Base", everyone on the internet is going to point and laugh at you for being old and busted.
The second part has some excellent ways to comb for new names, some of which many veterans already know, but it's a good compilation, and gave me a few ideas for my next name search. I can confirm to anyone who doubts it that Syp's Rule of Three really is true. I have known only 1 or 2 people who have been able to avoid having their name reduced to a 3 or 4 letter nickname that is used almost constantly in place of the whole thing. You can't avoid it, so sometimes it's not that bad to go with the flow and plan your name around it. Same thing with the similar names across characters thing. It works pretty well, if you like the idea, but woe to you if you accidentally take someone's naming scheme and join their guild or group of friends!
If you're having trouble thinking of a new name, or plan to roll a character at some point in the future, give the article a read. It's pretty keen.
Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments
Posted on 2008 under News |
31
Mar
Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Fan stuff, Blizzard, Humor
Yes, loved by some and hated by others, tomorrow is 4/1, April 1st, known around the world (or at least the Internet) as
April Fool's Day, and odds are that you'll have a lot of fools trying to play with your head. As you probably know, our friends at Blizzard love April Fool's, so you can probably expect to see some shenanigans from them tomorrow.
Just to get you ready, here's a quick roundup of what they've done in the past few years. It seems like they've been upping the ante for a while now, so
be "prepared": you never know what we might hear from them tomorrow.
2004: Blizzard announced that two-headed Ogres would
become a playable race... playable by two players, that is. Not many people fell for this one -- MMOs are all about being social, but playing a character with another player? A little too wacky to be legit.
Lots more after the break, including the chaos that went down last year (Tinfoil Hats, anyone?) in the
Warcraft community.
Continue reading April Fool's Days of Blizzard's past
Permalink | Email this | Comments
Posted on 2008 under News |
31
Mar
Filed under: Items, Analysis / Opinion, Virtual selves, Expansions, Factions, RP
The idea of being able to customize your character's look and feel beyond choosing one of 4 or 5 basic face and hairstyle choices at character creation or upgrading to a new piece of loot is one that's near and dear to me. I'm an RPer, so I like to think of each of my characters as a unique person with unique quirks, ideas, and fashion sense that I can't always express as I'd like to due to the limitations of WoW's mechanics. I've even had some very good friends quit WoW because their characters weren't customizable enough.
The idea came to the front of my mind a few weeks back when I was visiting my brother. We played EverQuest together, but when it came time to move on from that game, he (and most of our EQ guild) chose Everquest 2, and I chose WoW. So, of course, he ribs me about it quite often, and since I was visiting, he decided to load up EQ2 and show me what I was "missing."
Now to be honest, I'm still a bigger fan of WoW, but that's a subject for a different article. One thing I will say for EQ2 is that I was very impressed with the wider range of options to customize your character and show off your character's accomplishments. There's a few ideas related to character customization from EQ2 and other games that I'd really like Blizzard to continue emulating in future patches and in the WoTLK expansion that I believe would deepen the game experience for me and my friends, and for many other players as well.
Continue reading Blizzard needs to steal character customization Ideas from other MMORPGs
Permalink | Email this | Comments
