Yet Another Warlock Nerf has posted a great summary of the major patches.  As the author, Horns, put it:

Can you imagine WoW today without daily quests? Without guild banks, flying mounts or Biscuits? Remember the days when warlock and hunter pets followed us on the ground while we were flying, when there weren’t any battlegrounds or arenas? When warlocks could beat rogues, when quest givers didn’t show up on our minimaps? When meeting stones served as a sort-of LFG tool, when I spoiled the entire post by giving you a summary at the beginning?

It’s a must-read for any WoW fan.  He excluded class changes, calling them the least significant.  (I agree with the approach for a different reason: I think they merit their own, in-depth post.)  The post shows the difficulty of going head to head with WoW– look at what they’ve managed to add since release.  But Blizzard’s learning process is also exposed, with several less-than-successful stabs at some thorny issues.  (Does anyone use the in-game voice support?  Or the LFG tool?)

One of my favorite things about MMOs is the exposed design process.  Designers encounter the most exacting balance standards ever, in a post-release setting with thousands/millions of players, and we get to watch the successes and failures.

This was already linked from Penny Arcade, so I probably don’t have to mention it.

You know how sometimes, you’re in the middle of composing an email, and you accidentally hit the send button?

Like, you might be attaching a file, and accidentally click “game_footage_EDITED_OUT_OMG_DO_NOT_SEND_TERRIBLE.avi”, instead of “game_footage_promo.avi”.  You try to click “remove attachment”, but instead you click in the “to:” field, and add all your PR and marketing outlets, and then you accidentally click “send”.

Anyway, that happens to me all the time.  And by “me”, I mean Square.

Click after the jump to get my full impressions.

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I had a brilliant idea for a WoW mod: Yelp for WoW.  Call it Whelp.  Rate your group members, your gear, instances, whatever.  “Five stars– finally a tank that knows what he’s doing.”  “1 star– ninja’d my Thori’dal for his rogue.”

Cons:

• May violate WoW mod rules for drawing on external data.
• Everyone would have to download and install it.
• You can’t make money from WoW mods.
• Would degenerate into a cesspool of gossip, rumors, and griefing, and the drama would completely overshadow its usefulness as a tool.

Pros:

• Would degenerate into a cesspool of gossip, rumors, and griefing, and the drama would completely overshadow its usefulness as a tool.

So… get to it, modders!

There are 615 people ahead of you in the queue to read my Wrath of the Lich King impressions.  Estimated wait time: 54 minutes.

Fable 2′s a pretty great RPG, with one huge flaw: you have no idea where you are in the world.  Zones exist in seemingly unrelated points in space, and roads connect them randomly to other zones.  One imagines the designers had a highly detailed world map as they created the game– and then excised all the intermediate spaces from the game, and ran the map through a shredder.

I’d forgive the process if, upon each zone exit, a group of mysterious kidnappers threw a bag over my head and tossed me into their trunk.  In the absence of such an explanation, I suggest these community-created world maps.  Set your laptop next to you, and you’ve got Fable 2 in-game maps without the interface load lag of a real in-game UI!

Pretty, with minimal locations (pre-spire):

Higher detail:

From WoW Insider.

  Fable 2 incorporates a few Animal Crossing-style elements: shops you own continue to make money while you’re not playing.  Unfortunately, you make money a lot faster while you are playing.  This, like most of Fable 2′s choices, is a moral decision: do you make more money faster, and destroy the earth in the process?  Or do you sacrifice your personal gain for the good of the planet (and your electrical bill)?

Like every other evil decision in Fable 2, this has a simple decision.  Leave your XBox on, and use the extra cash to buy organic vegetables– which, upon consumption, increase your purity score.  Guilt alleviated!

Via this article about the demise of NBA Street, Peter Moore (at EA now for those not keeping track) said this about EA Sports’ new direction:

If Wii Sports has taught us anything, it’s that people will sit there and play big head tennis all day long. We need to be able to tap into that audience.

This bodes well (if you make a living by savagely tearing down games).

Hey, I’m not seeing enough about World of Goo.  Perhaps you remember the Experimental Gameplay Project, which started a couple years back when a few students made a new game every week.  They came up with some pretty fun gameplay demos, and now one of them (Tower of Goo) has been turned into a full-fledged game, World of Goo.

It’s fun, it’s different, there’s a free demo you can download and check out in just a few minutes.  No excuses!

Update: Oh, by the way: I bought it a couple days ago and am definitely digging it.