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Tobold
A blog 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 45 min agoMay 21, 2013
08:16
Our heroes had ended the previous session by killing the vampires in the dining hall of Castle Ravenloft. As they had used up a lot of resources like healing surges and daily powers in the last two...
Categories: Bloggers
May 17, 2013
07:54
Dàchéng believes I don't know the difference between toys and games. But not only am I very well aware of that difference, I also believe that he didn't consider the possibility of somebody playing...
Categories: Bloggers
May 16, 2013
12:45
As Azuriel always disagrees with me in the comment section of my blog :) , it is worth mentioning that I fully agree with his post on Instant Gratification vs Fun Investment. So much that I'd even...
Categories: Bloggers
May 15, 2013
14:01
There has been some renewed discussions on the "evils of Free2Play" following the news that Rift is changing its business model and like so many others will abandon subscriptions. In the context of...
Categories: Bloggers
08:34
Over the years I have repeatedly on this blog proposed the idea of having a game that mixes MMORPG and Trading Card Game elements together. So when Cryptozoic did a Kickstarter for a MMO Trading Card...
Categories: Bloggers
May 14, 2013
09:12
When you read a review of a video game, almost always there are comments about the graphics: How do the characters look, how are they animated, how do their surroundings look, and how do things like...
Categories: Bloggers
May 13, 2013
15:31
There are certain games which would be impossible to play without randomness, for example Poker. And personally I like some degree of randomness in tactical games, because it adds to replayability if...
Categories: Bloggers
May 12, 2013
12:18
I'm planning on running a huge "sandbox" adventure for my D&D campaign, using Wizard of the Coast's boxed set Madness at Gardmore Abbey. Basically that is a huge abbey complex on a hill with lots...
Categories: Bloggers
May 11, 2013
16:09
As I mentioned yesterday, Cardhunter is a game about a group of people playing Dungeons & Dragons. At one point their usual DM Gary is replaced by his elder brother Melvin, who makes the players...
Categories: Bloggers
May 10, 2013
07:44
After having made sure that there is no NDA (the beta forum is even public) I want to tell you some more about Cardhunter. You could say that it is a game about a game, you are playing a group of...
Categories: Bloggers
May 9, 2013
06:32
As there are so many different genres of games it would be hard to say how the perfect game for me would look exactly. But Cardhunter is coming pretty damn close. If you have any interest in...
Categories: Bloggers
May 8, 2013
10:37
So yesterday I downloaded the 4 GB of Neverwinter and tried it out. I checked the forums of my WoW guild and found on which server they were playing Neverwinter, so I chose that server. Created a...
Categories: Bloggers
08:52
In the previous session the heroes had cleared most of the ground floor of Castle Ravenloft. This evening we only played like half a session, because we started late, and then took some time to...
Categories: Bloggers
May 7, 2013
10:01
The Godmother is discussing a WoW Insider community blog topic of What if WoW didn't have guilds?. It mentions the problem to "exclusivity" of guilds: "Ultimately the problem is not the Guilds...
Categories: Bloggers
May 6, 2013
15:36
Hong Kong mobile applications developer Mad Head Limited sent me an e-mail asking me to review their iOS game Tower of Saviors. I get lots of demands like that and don't always comply, but at least I...
Categories: Bloggers
May 3, 2013
12:48
I got an e-mail today from Steam that one of the games on my wish list was on sale. Tomb Raider was available at half price less than two months after release. In a market like this, is anybody still...
Categories: Bloggers
11:53
I have mentioned repeatedly my model of what a game is: Repeating units, like combat, held together by content (cut-scenes, quest text). So I was very interested when via Raph Koster's website I...
Categories: Bloggers
May 2, 2013
17:38
Brian Green a.k.a. Psychochild believes that we all need Camelot Unchained to succeed, so he'll be happy to hear that the Kickstarter campaign succeeded with $2.2 million achieved from the $2 million...
Categories: Bloggers
14:48
I was reading Kill Ten Rats review of Age of Wushu and came to the description of the cash shop: "The cash shop is an unmitigated disaster, with not a single item which becomes permanent to the...
Categories: Bloggers
May 1, 2013
10:17
I was playing with my iPad, installing various apps from Google. Among which was Chrome, the Google browser for the Internet. So imagine my surprise when the Apple App Store warned me that this...
Categories: Bloggers
April 30, 2013
05:30
Game Dev Tycoon is an indie game that costs only $7.99 in the Windows app store, and is DRM-free. A free demo is also available. Nevertheless Green Heart Games determined that only 6.4% of the...
Categories: Bloggers
April 29, 2013
10:31
I'm rather busy this week with family stuff, and won't post much. So maybe some of my readers would like the opportunity to contribute and write something about the freshly released Neverwinter? If...
Categories: Bloggers
April 27, 2013
07:18
I am a huge fan of games with adjustable difficulty levels. I think that every player is different, and so what is just the right amount of challenging for one guy might be trivial for the next, or...
Categories: Bloggers
April 24, 2013
10:27
There is some new discussion ongoing in the blogosphere about an old subject, "social fabric" or group play vs. solo play. Psychochild thinks that soloing is responsible for people treating MMORPGs...
Categories: Bloggers
08:34
Just to let you know, the English version of Anno Online went into closed beta (me, I play in the German language open beta). There are a number of reasons why this game stands out from the usual...
Categories: Bloggers
07:41
My Borderlands 2 experience with the Bloodshot Stronghold is starting to turn into Groundhog Day, where I am playing through the same session over and over every night. I thought I was rid of that...
Categories: Bloggers
April 23, 2013
17:43
Spinks has a brilliant post up on the difficulty to use Kickstarter for a niche product like Camelot Unchained. Only 8,350 people backed that project up to now, and in spite of some willing to donate...
Categories: Bloggers
08:18
Borderlands 2 shares one annoying feature with many games designed for consoles: A save system where you can't save wherever you want, put your progress is automatically saved when reaching certain...
Categories: Bloggers
April 22, 2013
18:20
Some games I stop playing because I arrived at the end. Others I stop playing somewhere in the middle for no apparent reason. Thus the first Borderlands stands out in my memory as a game where I had...
Categories: Bloggers
April 20, 2013
07:52
World of Tanks is running a change your password event in which they reward every account which changes its password to something more secure with 300 gold, their real-money currency. That idea...
Categories: Bloggers
April 19, 2013
14:12
The Nosy Gamer regularly reports on CCP's "War on Bots" in EVE Online. I don't follow the discussion very closely. But in his latest post I stumbled over a quote: "Hmmm. 26 of my 29 accounts banned...
Categories: Bloggers
10:16
I find it interesting that there is a term ("whales") for people who spend a lot of money on a Free2Play game, but nothing equivalent for people who spend a lot of time. People like me, that is older...
Categories: Bloggers
April 18, 2013
19:04
Just to let you know, I just enabled the new function to add Google+ comments to the blog. Feel free to experiment on this thread and tell me what you think!
I turned Google+ comments off 5...
Categories: Bloggers
12:38
Personally I have a very simple model of role-playing games, be they pen & paper, single-player on a computer, or massively multiplayer online: In general these games consist of a "basic...
Categories: Bloggers
April 17, 2013
09:26
The Nosy
Gamer reports a 25% drop in Planetside 2 player numbers following the Cert-Gate affair. So what happened? Basically an accident of the Free2Play business
model: SOE made changes to their...
Categories: Bloggers
April 16, 2013
14:27
In the previous session the Favorites of Selune had entered Castle Ravenloft, in search of a way to kill vampire lord Count Strahd von Zarovich and thereby escape from Barovia. After the butler Igor...
Categories: Bloggers
13:36
EA is shutting down their range of Facebook games, like Sims Social. Calling that a "news Flash" is actually a pun, because I do have a theory why Facebook games are currently in a death spiral, and...
Categories: Bloggers
April 15, 2013
09:55
If I had to summarize the events of my current D&D campaign up to now in a paragraph, it would look something like that: The players started out being sold into slavery from an orphanage, were...
Categories: Bloggers
08:30
In discussions on the internet, when discussing groups of people, quite often these people are divided into two groups: The haves and the have-nots, the good and the bad, the intelligent and the...
Categories: Bloggers
April 14, 2013
10:07
Tim Westhaven sent me a free downloadable copy of his indie pen & paper roleplaying game Shattered Moon, and I promised to review it. Now I am aware of the difficulties of getting the word out on...
Categories: Bloggers
April 12, 2013
16:03
I finished Mass Effect 3 last weekend, and as I didn't have much time this week during the evenings, I only played Anno Online every day. But somehow I was repeatedly wondering what I should play as...
Categories: Bloggers
07:43
The Free2Play business model has gone from "you can't do that in the West" to one of the dominant business models for MMORPGs in a few years. While it certainly isn't a panacea, it certainly can get...
Categories: Bloggers
April 11, 2013
12:11
Over the years the regular readers of this blog change, especially when I start writing about different subjects. Thus with me writing more about pen & paper roleplaying these days, it has become...
Categories: Bloggers
April 10, 2013
14:16
Electronic Arts just managed to win the title Worst Company in America for the second time in a row. Lots of commentary on that is justified. But I don't think all of it is. In particular I keep...
Categories: Bloggers
07:34
Oh man, sometimes this blog makes me feel my age. I simply don't understand the entitlement kids of today. In yesterday's thread several people justified video games piracy by games being "too...
Categories: Bloggers
April 9, 2013
13:09
One thing that frequently annoys me about discussion on the internet is that people tend to avoid arguing the real question, but instead conjure up the horrors of some secondary evil. Talk about...
Categories: Bloggers
09:46
My newsreader is full of blog posts complaining about LFR in World of Warcraft, and a lack of healers. Meanwhile Pete from Dragonchasers writes about Defiance saying: "In theory you could set...
Categories: Bloggers
08:25
What is the difference between a game and a toy? The dictionary definition will tell you something about a game being "structured playing", but basically it comes down to there being rules and win...
Categories: Bloggers
April 8, 2013
16:28
I have always argued that subscription numbers of a MMORPG six months after release do allow us to say something about the quality of a game. If people are still playing then, they must be having...
Categories: Bloggers
April 6, 2013
07:28
One of my favorite quotes is Sid Meier's "A [good] game is a series of interesting choices", because I very much agree with that definition. I am currently playing Mass Effect 3, which I got for free...
Categories: Bloggers
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