October 8th, 2009 : MMO Makeovers  

A couple days ago, MMORPG.com published an article called the “Top 5 MMOs That Need Remakes.” As one would imagine, it’s a listing of MMOs that are too outdated to meet today’s expectations but definitely had something going for them once upon a time. And sure, who wouldn’t want to rekindle the magic if they really enjoyed a game that’s now past it’s prime? There’s no blue pill for that, but take what worked well, then add improved artwork and engines and you’ve really got something, right?

For myself, the old flame is Everquest, my first MMO love. But you can’t remake EQ. If anything, EQ2 is very much an attempt at that and has achieved a reasonable amount of success, but it didn’t light a candle in comparison for me. It was too different… heck, today’s revamped EQ1 is too different even. While each new MMO takes ideas from the old ones, constantly finding ways to improve upon the genre, I feel like you can never go back home. The old graphics, odd quirks (aka bugs), and roundabout way of doing things were part of EQ’s identity. You can’t retool the terrain until it’s unrecognizable and call it by the same name (granted, WoW plans on doing just this with their Cataclysm expansion, but I’ll hold off on my comments regarding that till I see for myself).

Felwithe, the High Elf city of Everquest, in all it’s box-y glory is on the left. Sure, I’ve built more attractive and complex castles in Second Life, but familiarity doesn’t always breed contempt for those of us who get all warm and fuzzy over the original EQ world. On the right is Tunaria, the new Felwithe of EQ2.

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  August 19th, 2009 : Zombie Apocalypse  

Maybe recent epidemics such as swine flu have raised public concern… or maybe too many people are playing Left 4 Dead while commemorating Michael Jackson with excessive rounds of his Thriller video. Whatever the case may be, according to a handful of researchers, surviving a zombie apocalypse has become worthy of academic study and findings are looking pretty grim for humanity. A team of Canadian mathematicians from the University of Ottawa and Carleton University point out,

If the timescale of the outbreak increases, then the result is the doomsday scenario: an outbreak of zombies will result in the collapse of civilization, with every human infected, or dead. This is because human births and deaths will provide the undead with a limitless supply of new bodies to infect, resurrect and convert.

Their paper speculates that a city could be overrun in three or four days. I guess it’s time I took this seriously and picked up a copy of The Zombie Survival Guide or just get ready to admit defeat and sign up for an account at ZombieHarmony (because the apocalypse doesn’t have to be lonely).

While I do appreciate zombie movies as much as anyone else, attempting to perform a serious study that uses a zombie model based on modern pop culture representations out of Dawn of the Dead seems as misguided as performing a vampire study based on findings from Twilight (gosh, what would you do if an Edward Cullen-esque vampire sparkled at you?!). On the other hand, actually getting paid to watch movies and play video games so you can write When Zombies Attack!: Mathematical Modelling of an Outbreak Of Zombie Infection might not be such a bad gig after all and certaintly has a lot of blogs buzzing about it.

  August 19th, 2009 : L33T the Parents  

Another amusing MMO spoof just as I renewed my WoW subscription… well actually I just signed on for a free 10 day trial and we’ll see from there.

I agree with the L33Ts; no n00b boyfriends for me either!