My guild is serious about our raiding. My guild is typically considered to be fairly casual by other guilds.

To many of you, those two statements seem to be completely contradictory to each other.

To those of you who consider yourselves a bit more hardcore, it may be hard to fathom how a guild which doesn’t maintain strict attendance requirements, with an active membership of nearly 60 members (outright “bloated” by many raid guild standards), who only raids three nights a week (for only three hours at a time) and who isn’t even to third tier of T8 raiding could possibly even think to consider themselves “serious” as raiders.

Yet, to other players who may not be quite as involved as we are, the thought of a guild which tracks raid points and holds bids for loot, who raids three nights a week (for a whopping three hours at a time!), who is already in the second tier of T8 raiding, and who maintains a large active roster of nearly 60 members could only be described as “serious” raiders.

Truly, “casual” (and “hardcore”) is in the eye of the beholder.
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EDIT: It looks like Tipa beat me to it this morning by an hour.

According to the USPTO’s TESS trademark database, Sony Online Entertainment has filed two trademarks for “Everquest II: The Shadows of Odyssey” (77451534 and 77450867).

Based on recent discussions in the lore forums regarding the long lost Shissar and hints in the forums from developers regarding the fact that Luclin is, in fact, not a barren wasteland, this could potentially point to a Luclin based expansion.

However, please note that the recent lore fiction regarding “Escape from Guk” and “Flight of the Mudskipper” could indicate a different locale altogether.

As mentioned by Scott Jennings this morning, it seems that Antonio Hernandez, a player of World of Warcraft, is suing IGE.  Moreover, he’s trying to have his suit certified as a class action lawsuit.

Oddly enough, IGE’s position is that the lawsuit has no merit because players “have no standing to sue because they have no ownership or property rights within World of Warcraft“.

So wait, if players have no ownership or property rights, what exactly was it that IGE was selling all this time?  More to the point, what exactly were they buying in the first place (the gold came from somewhere, right?).  If the players didn’t have rights to ownership or property, what exactly was IGE paying players for?

I was strolling through the internet’s many tubes not all that long ago when I came across a thread on SOE’s official forums where a player was suggesting that access to Everquest II’s exclusive level based chat be based on the highest level character a player has per account…as opposed to the current system which bases such access on the current character being played.

Now, for those of you who don’t actually play Everquest II (and why not!?), let me explain how these channels work in the first place. Across every server in Everquest II, there are channels referred to as “level chats”. These channels are named for the level a character must achieve in order to access the chat channel in the first place. Generally speaking, the channels tend to open up every 10 levels, starting with “Level 1 to 9 Chat” all the way up to “Level 70 to 79 Chat” and even “Level 80 Chat” (which will presumably become “Level 80-89 Chat” when the level cap increases next).

It’s an interesting system, to be sure. I’m just not convinced that it’s necessarily the right one.

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Random thought of the day:

Ever notice how some of the biggest self-proclaimed authorities on MMO’s often have no characters higher than level 35  in any particular game?  I’ve been reading a lot of new blogs and even paid fansites lately where the writers are involved in 27 different MMO’s right now, but couldn’t properly explain what a 2 year old zone looks like because they spend no more than five hours per game every third week.

Follow-up thought:

(Must remember to level up past 35 tonight.  )

Well, Zobek and I have been working hard on some behind the scenes work that will hopefully add some greatly enhanced functionality to the site soon.

If you’d like to see some of the things we’ve been working on, read on…

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As we ramp up activity here, Zobek and I are looking for a few good loudmouths to help out here at Clockwork Gamer. Think you’re ready for the ultraglamous world of MMO Blogging?

Read on…

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In Legends of Norrath, my new priest deck has lost to Zobek twice now, once to his scout deck and once to his fighter deck.  Tweaking is underway.  We’ll see how that works this week.

So, the shorthand:

Zobek: 2
Kendricke: 0

Grrrrrr….

I had the opportunity to meet a ton of great people at this latest FanFaire.  One particularly great guy is known to the rest of us simply as “Average Joe”. 

If you never read his blog, you’re missing out.  I’ve got it linked on the right, and he’s quickly becoming a must-read from day to day.  He may not always have the most in-depth news articles, but he’s got a sincere, absolutely contagious enthusiasm about him. 

So, I’m advising all eleven of my regular readers to go check him out.  Today. 

http://texasrugby.wordpress.com/

(I don’t get the rugby reference, either.  Apparently when he’s not geeking it up with the rest of us online, he likes to go into the sun and sweat or something.  And not just any sun…but the TEXAS sun!)

Time passes slowly up here in the mountain
We sit beside the bridges and walk beside the fountains
Catch the wild fishes that float though the stream
Time passes slowly when you’re lost in a dream.

-Bob Dylan

Just weeks ago I booked my flights to Las Vegas for FanFaire, and bemoaned the fact that I’ll have to spent around 3.5 hours in the air flying from Minneapolis.  Seriously - three whole hours!!

Well, a flight that long demands some new reading material, so it’s off to the bookstore with me.  I’m a bit of history buff, so I head right over to that section and start poring through the titles.   Though a lot of the books I  read might seem pretty dry to most people, I find myself completely engrossed in the titles.

One fact I find myself continually fascinated by is the amount of time spent travelling throughout history.  When Julias Ceasar took his command in the provice of Baetica in  “Farther Spain” in 61 BC, it took him 3 weeks by litter from Rome.  In 1820, it took nearly 4 months time for the whaler Essex to travel from Nantucket to the whaling grounds of the central Pacific.  Even at the turn of the 20th century, it could take weeks for a steamboat to travel less than a thousand miles up the Congo river.

Compared to all that, my meager 3 hour flight seems fairly meaningless.  And yet, players still complain today that it can take 20 whole minutes to travel from one end of an MMO’s online world to the other.  Seriously - 20 whole minutes!!

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