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Tobold
A blog mostly about MMORPG ( Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games ) and other games I'm currently playing. Please read my Terms of Service
http://tobolds.blogspot.com/
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Last update
1 hour 26 min agoFebruary 10, 2012
11:35
Imagine you lose your job and have trouble finding a new one. Would it be wiser to keep up your standard of living using borrowed money, or to reduce your spending to adjust it to your reduced...
Categories: Bloggers
09:00
Google is becoming less and less useful to me, because over the last years they changed how they display their search results. Instead of displaying a link directly to the site you searched for, they...
Categories: Bloggers
06:30
I've had some recommendations for adventures from readers, by comment or by mail, and have been busy looking through them. The good news is that there are adventures out there with better stories and...
Categories: Bloggers
February 9, 2012
06:30
February 8, 2012
09:17
I've been reading through the first stand-alone D&D 4E adventure released by WotC and frankly, it sucks. There is one village, two non-combat encounters, and 24 battles. Most of them lined up one...
Categories: Bloggers
06:30
Me and all my friends finished school years ago. Based on that representative sample I am quite certain that nobody goes to school any more these days! Does this sound slightly crazy to you? The...
Categories: Bloggers
February 7, 2012
10:14
MMORPGs are fun. Even if we sometimes complain about this or that, overall we end up spending hundreds or even thousands of hours with these games, which we presumably wouldn't do if there wasn't any...
Categories: Bloggers
February 6, 2012
06:30
Over the weekend the enthusiasm of me and the other players in my pen & paper roleplaying group for changing to Dungeons & Dragons 4th Edition grew, and as a result we are starting to play tonight....
Categories: Bloggers
February 4, 2012
06:30
In the 2001 census in Britain, "Jedi" was the 4th largest religion. Even if probably most of them were just making fun of the government the specific choice of "Jedi" over some other fictional...
Categories: Bloggers
February 3, 2012
13:27
Combat is an important part of many different games, including role-playing games. While games without combat are possible, see for example A Tale in the Desert, they are few and far between....
Categories: Bloggers
06:22
The word "amateur" has French (and ultimately Latin) roots, literally meaning "lover of". It describes somebody who does an activity out of love for it, not because he is getting paid for it. While...
Categories: Bloggers
February 2, 2012
10:15
In yesterday's investor's earnings call, Electronic Arts said they sold over 2 million copies of Star Wars: The Old Republic, and had 1.7 million subscribers. I'm not quite sure at what moment in...
Categories: Bloggers
06:30
Much has been discussed on this blog on the relative advantages and disadvantages of linear games versus open world games. Skyrim was widely hailed as a great open world game, but it also serves as...
Categories: Bloggers
February 1, 2012
13:53
The original Everquest goes free-to-play. Somehow I'm not sure that is going to be a big success. But then, I might actually try it again sometime, just for laughs and nostalgia.Tobold's MMORPG Blog
Categories: Bloggers
13:50
Syp has a picture of the day a photo of him holding up a Star Trek Online Collector's Edition he bought for $6.50. Which had my fullest understanding, I bought a collector's edition of Final Fantasy...
Categories: Bloggers
06:30
I am currently preparing my first Dungeons & Dragons 4th Edition adventure, after having taken a break of over 15 years from dungeon mastering. I'd love to share, but as my players can read the...
Categories: Bloggers
January 31, 2012
10:53
January 30, 2012
16:37
A quarter of a century ago I still produced campaign maps for Dungeons & Dragons by hand, using hex paper and colored crayons. Now that I am preparing a new campaign, I realized that I had better...
Categories: Bloggers
07:43
One of the major themes of this blog is how people react to incentives. Unfortunately the disadvantage of observing how this works in games is that you realize how much of that is going on in real...
Categories: Bloggers
January 29, 2012
10:46
Diablo 3 is going to have an auction house in which players can sell virtual items to other players for real money. Which prompted some people to start dreaming of getting rich by playing video...
Categories: Bloggers
10:21
I've spent like 10 minutes yesterday playing Star Wars: The Old Republic before I got bored, and watched video reviews of 4th edition Dungeons & Dragons on YouTube instead. And read some written...
Categories: Bloggers
January 28, 2012
10:25
While googling for Dungeons & Dragons 4th edition, I discovered there is a "Dungeons & Dragons 4th edition for Dummies" book out there. I found that extremely weird. I know that there are "for...
Categories: Bloggers
06:30
When EA Bioware refused all my credit cards and Paypal as payments, I naturally opened a customer support ticket with them. I've used the cards elsewhere since, so I'm sure it is a problem with them,...
Categories: Bloggers
January 27, 2012
13:54
It didn't take long after me mentioning Dungeons & Dragons until the first commenter popped up saying that this wasn't the best system to roleplay with. Specifically Inquisitor said: "4e doesn't...
Categories: Bloggers
08:57
I am strangely excited about a new game opportunity, more than I have been for years. If I had to sum up my gaming history in one phrase, I'd say that I played Dungeons & Dragons in the eighties,...
Categories: Bloggers
06:30
The current generation of consoles is getting long in the tooth, and the next generation is starting to get announced. But some of the features of the next generation consoles are likely not to...
Categories: Bloggers
January 26, 2012
13:35
I don't know what's up with that Rohan guy. He used to write a blog about paladins and raiding. But these days he writes one post after another which describe completely what I am thinking. Is he...
Categories: Bloggers
11:37
This week Google+ officially changed their name policy to not necessarily require real names. Specifically in cases like mine, I am allowed to be Tobold on Google+, as long as I can provide "Proof of...
Categories: Bloggers
January 25, 2012
06:30
I haven't played my World of Warcraft characters for quite a while now, about 9 months. But it wouldn't be totally correct to say that I lost all interest in WoW. Rather the situation is that my low...
Categories: Bloggers
January 24, 2012
06:30
I do agree with Raph Koster's recent statement that narrative is not a game mechanic. But that is not why you should read that post. The reason why you should read that post is that Raph presents...
Categories: Bloggers
January 23, 2012
13:29
There has been a lot of talk about the news that some financial analyst downgraded EA stocks, believing that SWTOR wasn't doing so well. And judging by anecdotal evidence from the blogosphere, we...
Categories: Bloggers
08:45
My main character in Star Wars: The Old Republic is a trooper / commando, with a healing spec. That is deliberate, so I can get into groups, because small group instances are my favorite content in...
Categories: Bloggers
January 22, 2012
13:30
I am getting a lot of mail lately from people who would like to "guest post" on my blog about Diablo 3, for example about the recent beta changes, or why the RMAH is good for the game. Nice to see so...
Categories: Bloggers
January 21, 2012
11:34
My 30 free days of Star Wars: The Old Republic ran out, and it was surprisingly difficult to get EA Bioware to accept my money. The credit card I had used successfully with them to buy the game 30...
Categories: Bloggers
06:30
You might have heard of this week's Ilium disaster in Star Wars: The Old Republic. Basically Bioware changed the rules how PvP is handled in a specific PvP zone, and got surprised by the consequences...
Categories: Bloggers
January 20, 2012
08:58
Don't you hate it when you are thinking about a blog post and then see it already written by somebody else before you get to writing it? I fully agree with Rohan on SWTOR needing a Dungeon Finder....
Categories: Bloggers
08:21
When they realized that they would be releasing two very similar games just months from each other, the makers of Skyrim and Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning agreed on a deal to differentiate their...
Categories: Bloggers
January 19, 2012
10:52
January 18, 2012
11:58
The notes of Dr. Richard Bartle on Star Wars: The Old Republic are well worth reading. He doesn't go into too much detail, arguing that he actually makes a living by giving his opinion in detail, so...
Categories: Bloggers
09:09
When video games first appeared on home computers, players quickly realized that computers can be programmed, and thus games can be modified to the advantage of the player. We might have had...
Categories: Bloggers
January 17, 2012
06:30
If you happen to live in South Korea, the Diablo 3 you will be able to play will differ in one major aspect from that available for other countries: The South Korean version will have the real-money...
Categories: Bloggers
January 16, 2012
14:04
Trion suddenly felt that their game Rift needed a lot more trial servers, and thus "encourages" the players to move from those 11 servers now designated as trial servers to other servers. Less...
Categories: Bloggers
09:41
In the story of the 1001 Nights (or Arabian Nights) the king of Persia decides that all women are unfaithful, and marries a succession of virgins, beheading each one after the wedding night....
Categories: Bloggers
January 15, 2012
09:27
In Star Wars: The Old Republic on the bounty hunter / imperial agent starting planet of Hutta is a cantina which is part of Nem'ro the Hutt's palace. In that cantina is a table with two non-player...
Categories: Bloggers
January 14, 2012
06:30
Quoted for truth: "There is no end to the MMORPG blogs that actively ridicule people who are bad at MMORPG's. As I've said before, the people who are bad at MMORPG's are the only sane ones. Their...
Categories: Bloggers
January 13, 2012
11:55
Azuriel of In An Age posted a long series of long posts about the correlation between WoW's difficulty and subscription numbers. For some strange reason they appeared in my feedreader all in one day,...
Categories: Bloggers
09:02
People tend to think about other people in groups. But groups are nearly never completely homogeneous. Thus every possible statement you can make about "bankers", or "soccer fans", or "hardcore...
Categories: Bloggers
06:30
Games have rules. But besides those rules there are often conventions and social norms, which are not governed by the game rules itself. The behavior of players and supporters of a game is often...
Categories: Bloggers
January 12, 2012
09:27
Just a short link to a must-read post over at Rohan's Blessing of Kings blog. Rohan talks from the heart about attitudes towards failure in a raid: "They were all very good players, at least pure...
Categories: Bloggers
09:05
Today is another patch day for SWTOR, to version 1.0.2d. Again the patch is in the middle of the day for us Europeans, but as most people have gone back to work / school that is less of an issue than...
Categories: Bloggers
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