Category Archives: Community

NBI 2014: Calling all Poets

The NBI is back this month of May!
Time to grab your pens and join the fray!
Bloggers of all flavors, genres and creed
Contribute, ponder, write and read
About this special thing we do
The blogosphere – that’s me and you!

A special pen I give, nay feather
To those made from a different leather –
The wordsmiths, minstrels, frivolous kin
That fear no word or literal sin.
To you I call, just like before:
It’s time to rhyme with me once more!

Join for the NBI3 Poetry Slam!

The third Newbie Blogger Initiative of the MMO blogosphere has officially kicked off this May 1st, sporting a new web page and forums thanks to much time and effort put in by NBI maestros Doone and Roger. This NBI3 comes with a slightly different agenda than the previous ones, many new contributors and a whole bunch of events planned to bring the blogosphere together in what they do best: gaming.

And there will be writing of course, shared topics, friendly advice and yes – another poetry slam once more because why not?

The NBI poetry slam is officially back for a second round folks and here I am calling you – the veterans, the newcomers and last year’s most excellent participants to test and best the creative waters of MMO writing, be it with classic verse or freestyle!

The Rules!

The NBI3 poetry slam will be concluded by May 30th 2014. Up to that date you have time to figure out your words and contribute to this most worthy undertaking. Like last year, being there is everything; there are only winners in this competition!

The form of your contribution is free. Last year’s creations ranged from classic rhyme, limericks and haikus (17 syllables!), to screenshot poetry, song lyrics and abstract poetry. There are no limits to how you express yourself and you need no special skill level to have a go at creative writing!

However, there is one new requirement to spice up this year’s event and create a common thread among us, namely the poetry slam topic. I’m happy to reveal that this year’s poems have to pay tribute in one way or another to the following, most familiar and intriguing theme: “MAGIC”.

It’s up to the individual how you wish to interpret this, whether to take it literally and wax lyrical about spellweavers in games, magical lands or creatures, or whether you go off in a completely different direction and talk about the magic of gaming or what specific magic lies in the MMO genre for you personally. I am confident that there are plenty of ways to tackle this subject.

I look forward to some great contributions again and hope to see some new faces joining the ranks! After all, what is life without a bit of challenge, eh? Once again, all NBI poetry slam entries will be rounded-up on MMO Gypsy as well as the official NBI site by the end of May 2014. Feel free to leave me your entry’s URL in the comment section below or the respective NBI forum thread. I would hate to miss something.

With that, happy weekend MMO blogosphere and let the slamming commence!

No purpose, no nothing

No purpose, no nothing – that short but poignant conclusion to so many things, coming to me once more while writing Monday’s post and then Kadomi said it again, literally, in the comments:

I don’t enjoy not having a purpose. What good is all that freedom if it leaves me feeling empty after a while?

“Who may be allowed to linger that is fulfilled by purpose?” I’ve asked that before, in slightly different context but no less relevant to this cause. A purpose is an end (hence the double meaning) and in many ways, endings bring a certain degree of linearity or at least progression to life real and virtual. Yet, purpose is also what fulfills that life lest in not be literally point-less. There is a cosmic balance here, a trade-off and even our favorite genre in video games, MMORPGs must struggle for it – that balance between the sandbox and themepark, between too much freedom and too little, too much endgame and not enough satisfaction.

To what end?

No purpose equals nothing, in virtual worlds too.

No purpose, no point for guilds.

No purpose, no point for housing.

No purpose, no point for gear.

Take GW2’s gear grind – so futile, so unfulfilling because it is not required, does not prepare you for any kind of endgame that exists. And what is endgame, by now such an unpopular term, but not a purpose or “life after”? Take LOTRO’s homesteads – beautiful but empty, forever instanced away from the world of men, not serving any purpose really. Take any other MMO you can think of that allows you to solo self-sufficiently, obtain everything on your own and then wonder why people don’t play in guilds. Having co-founded two lasting, successful raidguilds in WoW, I am very pragmatic: guilds are common ventures first, uniting people with the same purpose for that purpose. More often than not, that purpose is what keeps the best guilds alive. So what?

I made some wonderful friendships in MMOs founded on a common goal; common goals glue people together. Maybe they are the only thing that truly does. Common goals on the horizon add purpose to our stride, infuse our dreams, inspire our achievements social or otherwise.

To clarify, that’s not to say that there’s no such thing as individual purpose defined on an individual level in every game and for virtually anything (even jumping puzzles! eww) – there absolutely is and it matters too. However, in isolation this doesn’t tend to create the same value on a cooperative level and not the same longterm appeal, either. Not in my experience anyway.

Give me purpose, give me endings

No purpose -> no point -> no end -> no meaning. If things can only have meaning if they also end, let’s have ends and lots of them. Let’s have many purposes.

MMOs and not just Landmark, need a ‘hard’ purpose for the features they implement. It sounds simple and yet it’s a glaring oversight in so many games, yes sandboxes and themeparks alike, and it always backfires in the mid- and longterm and affects the community most strongly.

Oh sure, a game’s early flame burns brightly like a bonfire in the night and by all means, warm yourself at that fire. Enjoy it while it lasts. In the long run however, you’ll want some meat on the bone to roast on that fire and sustain you. In the long run, you will need that.

Off the Chest – Landmark Edition: Shelving Landmark, Wanna-be Devs and my Trouble with Votes

otc

Having enjoyed Landmark’s closed beta for several weeks now, I am putting the game on hold for the time being. I am in fact not even sure I’ll bother with claim upkeep until launch. This by no means comes as a shock: I’ve predicted and talked about building fatigue in sandbox games in the past and I’ve been through the same stages of declining enthusiasm with Minecraft. Landmark has some powerful building tools and beats Mojang’s giant in every cosmetic respect, which is great, but for now the game isn’t offering any content besides building or the more recent tool grind introduced in last week’s patch. Since I see no reason whatsoever to painstakingly upgrade tools or crafting stations for no better reason than because I can, nor wish to build anything else for now, that’s it for me and Landmark until SOE implement social features.

The new, ugly tech forge.

The game isn’t very enjoyable right now when it comes to social interaction; I’m not sure what the alpha players were gushing about because ingame community to me is not people posting fancy pictures on forums or re-tweeting them on twitter (which I do too). Don’t get me wrong, player organized swap meets and building contests are nice and so are SOE’s regular dev streams where they interact with fans – it just doesn’t make the actual game any more social than it is and it doesn’t make your neighborhood any less dead. The majority of any MMO’s playerbase are not on message boards or twitch and the server landscape ain’t lying: no matter what island you jump on, the place feels pretty empty and themes are all over the place. (Yeah, I know they said theme servers are coming.)

Landmark needs a purpose for all the housing, needs trade, quests, guilds and cooperative content if it’s meant to last down the road. Unlike Minecraft it won’t have the myriads of differently themed, self-hosted server modes nor the leagues of addons that have given that game such longevity. Landmark is a restricted sandbox and while most of the social features I mentioned are announced in the blueprint, I am not convinced it’s ever going to be more than “building with your guild (maybe) and a few quests and achievements”. From that point of view, I worry about its self-proclaimed endgame-free future the way anyone should who has watched GW2’s identity crisis. But hey, Landmark really is beautiful and atmospheric and if EQN becomes all the better for it, you’ll hear no complaints from me. More power to die-hard builders, may you stick with the game for years!

On wanna-be devs and rabid fanbases

After some brief brushes with Landmark’s official forums, it strikes me how rabid a yes-(wo)men community the game has inspired, as far as vocal minorities go anyway. Every half-reasonable topic on game design or even innocent list of personal preferences / wishes for the future, is getting derailed by righteous defenders of the blueprint. Clearly labeled player <suggestions> are often shot down because someone has learned each and every single line by heart ever uttered by Dave Georgeson (clearly not his fault, he’s awesome). I have already experienced some of that defensiveness myself on twitter and as a design-oriented, critical blogger, it’s not something I am used to. This is not my type of community and frankly, if you’re already in aggro-mode during alphas and betas, maybe you shouldn’t be a play-tester. MMOs change all the time.

I’ve wondered a little about this particular hype for peaceful building-MMO Landmark and have come up with a few possible explanations:
a) The Landmark community consists of a very broad demographic with very different interests (builders only, PVErs, PVPers) many of which may not be overly familiar with level-headed design debates. Richt now, everyone thinks the game is just for them.
b) Publishing blueprints way in advance and telling your playerbase that they’re your co-developers isn’t good for people’s egos and for keeping an open mind towards deviant player suggestions.
c) Games with a strong focus on individual “claims” make everyone more entitled and aggressive than usual.
d) I clearly need to stop bothering with anything public forum.
e) Also: EQ/SOE-evangelism.

If you have any other theories to add, I’d love to hear them!

The trouble with voting systems

My Inn of the Last Home has received a bit of love since the global voting system was introduced last week, via the ingame gallery feature. For those unfamiliar with this recent addition: players can now showcase and tag their claim with one screenshot in a global database that others can view and instantly up-vote (without having to visit). The new tool is wonderful insofar as it easily allows you to discover other claims and themes on any island and seek them out because coordinates. Yet, the voting system in particular has left me unfulfilled just the way it always does on webpages, blogs and elsewhere.

What is a vote on content? It doesn’t tell you whether the content was examined/read fully, why it was voted on or by whom. It’s impersonal numbers with no way to interpret or to create social interaction. Give me one personal blog comment I can reply to over 100 up-votes any day of the week.

Thanks (but I really wish I knew who you were!)

For social games, the feature strikes me as even less suitable. Sure, I absolutely get the wish to highlight great claims and make them more accessible for everybody. At the same time, it makes being discovered for newcomers a lot harder once you have 50 or more “top claims” that everyone will seek out before bothering with the lower ladders. And claims receive votes for all kinds of reasons: wonderful castles of 100 hours of work will be awarded the same or less votes than chaotic swap meets somebody put up for the community to contribute to. That’s a problem, as well as going by a single screenshot for multi-claims is. Votes don’t differentiate.

For me personally, it simply takes the fun away not knowing who visited the Inn or if they even did. So really – here’s my suggestion on what to implement instead, SOE: a guestbook. Give visitors / voters of claims the option to fill in a guestbook on site where they can leave a notice and name, so creators actually feel like there’s real people out there enjoying their work. That would be quite awesome (just a suggestion, don’t shoot!).

Your MMO world on twitter

Ever since joining twitter one and a half years ago, I’ve been very happy with the overall service and benefits it has provided me since. I was a twitter skeptic for a long time and I still have no facebook or G+ accounts, yet I am not looking back when it comes to my decision to join the twitterverse. I never really expected to write this but hey – you can’t always be right, can you?

As a blogger, there’s a multitude of things twitter can do for you, once you get over that initial only-140-characters?-eeew-I’m-a-writer!-cringe. Once you stop thinking of birdchat as an alternative/competition to blogging, which it absolutely isn’t, you’ll discover an endless stream of inspiration, information and entertainment casually on offer for the taking and completely customizable to your wishes. Whether twitter becomes an active asset to your writing, interacting and researching or whether it remains a passive tool, whether you use it to chat or just to promote, whether you’ll join a wider “community” (not formalized in any kind of circles) or only ever follow your five favorite people – it’s all up to you. Don’t be surprised if your list of follows keeps growing rapidly though; once you peeped down that rabbit hole, things may develop a life of their own.

twitterverse

Some bloggers use twitter for link exchange only, to post blog updates and keep track of launch news and developers. That’s a great way to start out and certainly good enough for some users. Every once in a blue moon, twitter will draw a bigger crowd of readers to your blog, although in retrospective you might wish it hadn’t. If you’re one of the players who are desperate for the latest news and updates, twitter is where developers and community services usually update first, which is especially handy during launch weekends and whenever the servers have gone offline. Again.

For me, that’s the tip of the iceberg. I love how twitter opens up direct channels between fans and creators, consumers and producers. Blog updates are nice too but if you have a functional blogroll, it’s not the most important thing in the world. What twitter really does for me as a niche blogger somewhere in the heart of Europe, is opening up channels of shared interest, discovery and communication with an ease you don’t usually find in other social media. There’s a world of like-minded geeks, gamers and MMO players (who don’t blog and never will) just one click away – all of them sharing the kind of info, interesting or hilarious content and special pearls it would otherwise take me years to come across just browsing the internet. As I’m sure is true for so many others, this is not the type of social environment I have access to in my everyday life (unfortunately).

As far as the MMO blogosphere is concerned, reading twitter has not just fueled and inspired many of my articles thanks to link or comment exchange (while waiting on the bus or filling the bathtub), it has in fact made my blogging much more personal. Fellow MMO bloggers can be talked to without formality and many will let a more private person shine through on twitter – someone who is tired at work (and playing games instead), burning dinner because of the latest Wildstar trailer, posting pictures of their cat with a Pikachu hat. Whatever other interests you bring to the table besides MMO blogging (just think VG music!), you’ll be able to build your own little neighborhood of secret agents keeping you informed at all times. You’ll be surprised to find how many other passions you share with people you’ve blogged alongside for years and oh, the laughs! There are no lonely geeks on twitter.

meval

This brings me to the main point of this post which isn’t in fact twitter promotion (although I guess that kinda happened now) but sharing my daily twitter MMO resources for those still starting out, looking for news and community hubs, or those just generally interested in the topic. I’m always on the lookout myself too; some accounts keep eluding you for years so this is by no means a finished list.

Your MMO and general gaming news on twitter

As a preamble, I am not going to link any of the awesome private twitter accounts or MMO bloggers I follow on twitter (many of which can be found on my blogroll) at this time, nor any podcasts (separate post), single personalities or official accounts as in ArenaNet or ArenaNet’s affiliated accounts. If you’re looking for a specific gaming celebrity, company or game, you’ll have no problem finding them.

What I am going to link instead are generally bigger and therefore active MMO and gaming resources I personally follow and find useful. This means daily news and reviews, community websites/webrings and fan organizations all around the topic of video gaming and related geekery.

General MMO news / communities

General Gaming

Game design / criticism

Videogame Music

Indie Games

Retro gaming

Geek Culture

As you can see, I am sadly light on VG music related accounts, so if you have any recommendations there (and elsewhere), let me know what I missed! (edit: some new links added!)

To all my fellow MMO bloggers still resisting the urge to tweet: I’d be happy to see you there! Of course that’s a choice everyone needs to make for themselves and whatever reason may keep you from more social media is to be respected. However, that doesn’t mean I won’t be nagging you again in the future for purely selfish reasons (I am looking at you Redbeard, Bhagpuss and Jeromai!). We are gonna get you yet!

The Newbie Blogger Initiative is back!

A year ago Syp from Biobreak launched the NBI project to get fresh blood into the blogosphere and spread link love. Many new bloggers took heart and rose to the occasion, while blogging veterans gave helpful advice as sponsors (or otherwise). Over a quarter of those participating remained, which I would personally call a great success; blogging regularly over a longer period of time takes persistence and a wide array of other skills, no matter your topic. Last year’s NBI brought us people like Jeromai, Ocho and Ravanel – just to name three wonderful writers from my blogroll.

nbimedium

We want you for this colorful neighborhood that is the MMO blogosphere! We are here to stay and we look forward to a new crowd of bloggers who will no doubt be inspired by newer titles, such as FFXIV, EQNext, TESO and Wildstar. For this reason, Doone from T.R. Redskies and Roger from Contains Moderate Peril have joined forces and revived the NBI with a brand new page and forum. Newbie bloggers look no further – sign up for a month of fun activities, special opportunities and extra blogosphere exposure!

Join the NBI-2 today! I look forward to many new faces.

P.S. If you would like to be a guest poster on MMO Gypsy, feel free to drop me an email or contact me via twitter.

The MMO blogosphere is here to stay – if you want it to

I’m not sure exactly what caused the recent stir of blogging-death related posts these past two weeks, or if it’s even a thing. Bloggers tend to magnify issues by joining in to comment or just muse on a matter. It doesn’t really mean everyone’s worried. That “golden age of MMO blogging”-theme has been spooking around ever since Cataclysm latest. So, let me just get this out of the way: I am not worried. It just so happens there’s a few more voices on this you shouldn’t miss.

Recently three more MMO bloggers, namely Jeromai, Azuriel and Jewel, have joined the debate and made some excellent points each on why things are starting to sound very doomy-gloomy and largely disproportional in some cases. Let me recite one of my favorite lines in this context: “…I’ve thought myself out of happiness one million times, but never once into it”. Let’s not overdo it with the next generation and social media anxiety – you don’t wanna start sounding like your grandparents, do you? So, let’s highlight just a few tiny bits from the links above –

There are I few issues I think that are maybe giving this impression. Firstly is that some of the old cranky dinosaurs of the blogging world have been retiring in recent years, some that were part of those early communities. [Jewel]

Do you know what the upcoming generation’s great crime is? They have a choice, whereas we did not. Do you think the New Blogger Initiative failure rate of 73% is a new phenomenon? It is not. In fact, I was pretty surprised the number that survived was that high. Blogging is hard. [Azuriel]

Some grew up and got older and prioritized other things to do with their time than write blog posts – like start a family, begin a new job, play non-MMO games, continue playing MMOs but not bother to chronicle or document it. – The others, well, they haven’t gone anywhere. [Jeromai]

I don’t know about you but I think it would have been incredibly boring to just have one primary game most were talking about. Now we have multiple opinions about a variety of subjects spawned on by new experiences and it is an exciting time to be a part of. [Jewel]

Things aren’t worse; things are different. To some, maybe different is worse. In which case, you probably chose the wrong genre of game to write about in the first place. [Azuriel]

In short, if you want a blogging community, it behooves you to form your own. Go visit and bookmark your favorite sites to read and leave a comment here and there. Develop your own circle and fellowship. [Jeromai]

About everything that I believe about this current, colorful and diverse age of MMO blogging (and what makes a community for that matter) is covered in these three articles. As Shintar points out elsewhere in context of MMO players crying for community in games, there is something comparatively weird about beweeping a collective that you are still part of. Don’t want blogging / the MMO blogosphere to die? Keep writing!

[…]I wrote elsewhere that I personally favor today’s diversity among bloggers. and even if MMO blogging becomes smaller, that doesn’t have to be worse, either. do we need 100% growth for growth’s sake? or could it be that the blogosphere grows closer together that way, making for better discussions at times? all things pros and cons.

This was always a niche and as you said too, blog ‘failure rates’ were always high. maybe the biggest contribution to this topic from our side is to not stop blogging just because we believe others stop blogging. 😉 my personal blogosphere corner is only marginally smaller than ever. [Syl]

My blogroll has shed a few feathers in the last three years, mostly due to retiring WoW bloggers who either felt like WoW was dying or realized that they had no more to say about it. Now I can’t guess what other bloggers want from their blogosphere; I can only point out what it is I am looking for. For me, it’s always been about exchange – about the hot cross-blog debates, about shared topics, about great discussions (you guys are awesome!). I don’t require a hundred other bloggers or commenters per topic for this, in fact that would be very hard to manage (although you can bet I would try and reply to every comment). The great majority of my visitors per day are silent readers, as I am sure they are for all blogs. As far as reciprocal relationships go, I can maybe keep track of dialogues between 30 or so different people. Does it matter how many more exist besides that? Were MMO bloggers ever so much more than a tiny niche, really?

If we keep with the numbers, blogs are about being read first and foremost. Any more visible connection is the amazing icing on the cake that keeps so many of us going. And I don’t detect a decline of general interest or visitors on this or any of the other active, general MMO blogs on my blogroll. No more than is warranted by annual summer- and release low, anyway. I’ve started dabbling with youtube more recently (and it’s really just for fun) and I’m having the greatest time with the Battle Bards podcast. More social creative media are awesome in combination with blogging. As for twitter, I’m sorry I didn’t join sooner. It has made MMO blogging that much more personal.

Here to stay

There is room here for everybody. There is a community you can carve out for yourself and reach out to. There is an audience for every type of blogger. The same was true ten years ago – only, there was actually a lot less MMO audience around than there is today. As for WoW’s hayday well, fewer blogs on the same topic mean better chances for newer bloggers to get noticed.

The community is you. It’s us. If we keep writing, connecting and acknowledging each other, it’s us who decide what happens to the MMO blogosphere in the future. And it’s also the only way of telling aspiring bloggers than this is still very much a venture worth pursuing. Well, I think it is.

Happy weekend to all you MMO bloggers, readers and commenters out there. Here’s a silly picture of a cat for you! It’s Friday after all!

Shard Mechanics in SotA: No country for Strangers?

Nobody was more surprised than myself to see Shroud of the Avatar, one of the most horrible name-givings in MMO history surely, reach its one million goal with an added extra of 30% on kickstarter. I know some players are desperate to bring “anything a bit like UO” back but still – surprised! And what better figurehead to sell that promise than Lord British, Richard Garriot, or Lord Snakependant as I like to call him. He and his eye-catching accessory seem to appear everywhere of late. Where can I get my fortune read, please?

This Tuesday night, Grakulen from MMORPG.com had the honor of interviewing Garriot on twitch and get some of the fan-base’s more pressing questions answered. For some obscure reason I found myself following that show, bravely ignoring the trashtalk going on in the live chat window. Now, I have no idea if any future version of myself would even consider playing SotA, nonetheless some of you might be interested to hear the following “news” or tidbits which were elaborated on by Garriot:

SotA will be all about meaningful, moral choices; players will supposedly be challenged in various ways and have to live with the consequences of their actions (taking extenuating circumstances into account). Tricky.
Outdoor player housing is back! While houses will be more exclusive than in UO and bound to designated town zones, players will not only be able to own public buildings but set up shops and vendor NPCs. Wahey, right? Also: you can choose to play a pure “farming” character.
There be world events; for example, towns will be besieged in various intervals (“every new moon”) and players will need to band up in order to save their infrastructure and NPCs. We’ve seen hubs taken over in Rift, so personally I hope there will be more drama and significance to this in SotA.
As SotA won’t be featuring different servers but one global mega-server, a sort of culling-mechanic is in place to reduce the amount of other players you can see at any given time. It’s not actually “culling” the way we have it in GW2 but rather dynamic instances (or shards) of the same server that players play on in order to avoid heavy traffic. Shards aren’t exactly new, yet in SotA the system ensures that friends will always end up on the same shard. The more removed an acquaintance, the less likely you will ever see them (however, those “invisible players” would still be able to access your shop as customers, since you are strictly speaking playing on the same world). The friend-feature aside, players will be “re-sharded” pretty much all the time, says Garriot.

This last part is where it got complicated. I understand it’s becoming trendy for MMOs to re-introduce that “one world feeling”, the way it’s also been announced for the Elder Scrolls Online. While I’m certainly pro server mechanics that ensure friends can play together (although there’s this wild thing called server transfers), the whole concept loses much of its appeal when we’re back talking about different layers/instances/shards and invisible people. Not such a big world after all?

Before I was able to formulate an even bigger concern however, another viewer in the twitch audience, Garbrac, beat me to it in live chat:

“So if I have no friends, will I be playing the game alone?”

Ever since MMORPGs have come out of the shadows with World of Warcraft, new games are being created under the solid assumption that players will show up “with friends”. You don’t make online friends in MMOs any more – you’re supposed to bring them. You can see it in game design too: the learning curve, jumping into medias res and the leveling journey become ever more trivial. At the same time, endgame challenges and/or difficult group content persist; big world or guild events require functional communities. Tough luck for the one who travels those first bits of the game alone! With little hardship comes little cooperation. Cooperation is where chance encounters transform into lasting bonds and guild invites (or creation) are generally the consequence.

Mind, I am not talking about enforced role setup and I am happy that new MMOs allow for playstyle variety. But if cooperation is a core value of high level content, it needs to be a requirement on low level too! Otherwise there’s a clear issue in preparing and setting up new players for the whole journey. And there’s an even bigger issue if server mechanics prevent soloers from ever meeting the same people twice! I cannot imagine anything more dreary than playing on a server that constantly changes my social environment! How on earth am I supposed to establish connections here? High level group content yay – but erm, can I please find some companions first?

Anyway, I can’t wait to hear a solution to this from the guys at SotA (unfortunately it was not addressed in the twitch talk). I don’t know about you, but I am not looking forward to MMO worlds that are constantly re-sharding me anywhere, unless I bring existing friends and family along!

Back to Minecraft (and my first video documentary!)

After the longest break since my first, very intense Minecraft spree over a year ago, it was decided last week, somewhat collectively out of the blue, that a revisit to Mojang’s prodigy was due. Truth be told, my absence from the game has had much to do with the unrestrained pace of my first encounter; I was completely and utterly hooked to MC for some weeks, spending nights in front of the PC exploring its depths (and creating my big ass castle dream). As a result, I burned out too quickly on what was still a limited game at the time, struggling with pre-release issues. Thus the last block of cobble stone set in my castle wall marked the ending of that first chapter.

But oh, have the times moved forward in Minecraft! With the arrival of the (approved) Spoutcraft client, Bukkit server mods, myriads of fan-written plugins and customization features, right down to some amazing and downloadable adventure maps, Minecraft has burst into what can only be described as (even more) baffling heights of community effort and player creativity. All the while, Mojang have kept improving and adding to the game, offering even more possibilities and freedoms to shape your unlimited, virtual space.

With great freedom comes great variety. While there are no default player classes in Minecraft, the game certainly brings out all sorts of playstyles and character types in its audience – from nutty engineers, to brave explorers, peaceful settlers and diligent carpenters. There are even MMO servers now with all the textbook MMO/RPG features you can think of, for both PVE and PVP, in a sword&sorcery, steampunk or zombie apocalypse themed world (where poisonous rain keeps falling…which you could’ve known if you actually read the tutorial).

I’ve visited a few public MMO servers and was duly impressed; after being run through a detailed starter/tutorial area, I was amazed to see item shops, teleport hubs, vendor and questgiver NPCs, PvP mini-games and more. Maybe a small detail but no less enjoyable for a soundtrack nut like myself: any designated area in Minecraft can now be attributed its own background music, hallelujah!

Public MMO servers

This is where it gets particularly interesting (and scary) because a “Minecraft MMO” can potentially offer the kind of tools and impact the current MMO market can still only dream of (known sandboxes included). It’s also where we see best how gameplay, fun and freedom trump everything else, top graphics first and foremost. The biggest woes of public MC servers right now are stability and bandwidth related, which is where big business MMO ventures will always have the upper hand.

Still, if a visit to Minecraft was highly recommended before, by now it is an absolute must! If you have any time to spare between your MMOs, RPGs and other games (and you know you do), have a look at MC! You will never install any game faster than this one.

My first omg-video documentary

Starting off on a fresh, customized server with friends, I quickly realized how behind I was on MC’s current flora and fauna, which inspired a small project called “the underwater greenhouse”. I am also still working on a much bigger scale hedge maze challenge but that’s for another time.

At completion, it struck me how I always wanted to give video commentaries with fraps another go (back when I was playing WoW my old PC was hopeless) which is how my first ever Minecraft (and for that matter first ever videogame documentary) came to be. In hindsight, I should probably have rehearsed this more…but I am a lazy person and easy to satisfy.

And yes, I am fully aware that everyone can hear my voice now. Oh noes!

Creating this video was actually so simple and fun that I am definitely doing more in the future. Maybe next time I’ll also manage to make less silly noises with my lips.

Quick Fraps how-to

Without exaggeration, making a video commentary like the one above is as easy as blogging. I was surprised how simple a tool fraps really is, with minimal setting up involved. My smartphone is more complicated than fraps! Together with a youtube account and two more, free tools, you are fully equipped to create your own gaming videologs which are lots of fun to do. And here’s how:

– Get a full version of fraps to be able to record more than 30secs videos
– Capture your ingame video (I use custom 15fps setting and record voice via headset)
– Watch this guide on using Xvid and Vdub for file compression
– Upload your compressed video to your youtube channel

Works like a charm! And you can add extras like a title pane or annotations with youtube later. I love learning new things by myself, so it’s not unlikely I’ll look into Sony Vegas or similar video enhancement software soon. So I guess that’s one more way how Minecraft can boost your creativity!