glad I'm not

I suddenly realized, while reading the latest Age of Conan newsletter, that I'm really glad I'm not a game designer. I mean, I love speculating about the next big thing, and coming up with cool concepts, and all that, but to actually have my professional reputation be tied to the success or failure of one of my ideas? That would be (for a significant percentage of MMOs) really depressing. I mean, even if I made what I considered a great product, odds are it would go down in flames. And that would break your heart, I imagine. At least the first time - I'm sure after a few projects go down you just move on.

Since I already mentioned the new Conan newsletter, I should mention that they have apparently added a swanky new dungeon, and upgraded their PvP. My personal favourite, though, is the zombie pets - if I'm going to have a game with minions, I darned well better be able to have undead minions!

end game

Very briefly, because others will say it better: why doesn't the 2.4 patch offer anything but end game content? I think there is a strong possibility my main will never even make it to level 70, but that doesn't mean I'm not interested in new content. I've got toons at several levels - new content wouldn't hurt there, either. Why not some new level 10-20 raids? stuff like that? Argh!

WoW updated today

As I'm sure you've seen somewhere by now, patch 2.3 is going live as we speak. A lot of people have complained about the level 20-60 speedup, calling it a dumbing down. My personal pick for the dumbing down award goes to the UI update (as detailed on WoW Insider): "Game objects that you can interact with now have a glow around them and their name over them. Wow! No more searching for twenty minutes just to find that little switch you have to click on." Now, I'm not necessarily saying I enjoyed some of those quests, but I'm not sure this is the best solution. I would have said a simple color tweak was a better fix in many cases, or making the quest text more clear. But in the end, I'm sure I'll like this, as I'm a lazy gamer, when it comes down to it.