Then Gabe

A pony for me?

@Gaurisk You don't actually play WoW, do you? Leveling is faster than it's ever been before. You can easily take a character from 1-80 in a month and a half of casual but steady play. A buddy of mine started playing WoW only 3 months ago and he already has two 80s.

MxO provided me with my most memorable moment in MMOs. It was not long after the game launched, perhaps a week, and I killed a Red Eye Agent and uncovered a code bit that seemed odd. I asked my new faction mates if they had seen one of these bits, and they all said no. We all knew that the official Live Event for the first chapter was due to start that night, so we figured it must have something to do with that. It turned out that we were right. As the Event began on the Linenoise server, a message was broadcast to the Matrix, seemingly from the Architect, "Gabri3l is in possession of illegal code. Hand over the code immediately or face the consequences. Discomfort will be extreme." A burst of adrenaline hit me. I had just been named as a major player in this event, despite being a lowbie of barely 20!

I began to receive /tells from players all over the server inquiring as to my whereabouts. I was a Zionite, but Merovingian and Machinists players were offering to come to my aid as well. I was near the usual hangout of Mara Central Hardline, and relayed that message to everyone who sent me a /tell. Unsure of how to turn over these "illegal code bits", and pretty positive that I wouldn't have anyway, I braced for the coming discomfort. I didn't have to wait long.

Suddenly, Red Eye Agents began to spawn en masse, some my level, and some way higher. Luckily, the cavalry rode in at the same time. In an instant, around 100 players hardlined over to Mara C, and the biggest non-PVP fight I've ever seen in an MMO broke out. Together, all 100 of us repelled the Red Eye threat. We took a breather and congratulated each other. But then it happened again. A Machinist friend whose name I can no longer remember was announced to be in possession of the same codes I had. We found her position and rushed to her rescue. All in all, this happened half a dozen times over the course of the 4 day event. And it was awesome.

*lights a candle for MxO*

So there's no confusion, the "class act" comment was sarcasm. I tried to do a "sarcasm off" tag, but it didn't show up.

Jack, once again you're a class act.

Why you feel the need to gloat that an MMO closes down, I'll never know. MxO was far from perfect, but it had a certain charm to it, and the old Live Events have never been matched in any other MMO. Unfortunately, that's because they're very impractical to operate on a regular basis.

@easybakeevan And they're expressing their views as consumers, which is their right. They do not feel that paying for a beta is justifiable, so they are not doing it. I don't know of any more effective way to vote with your wallet than to say, "I do not find your product to be worth the investment of my time and money."

17 million? Now you're just making numbers up. The highest Blizz has ever reported was 11.5 million. Look Jack, we realize you love WoW. That's all fine and good. I'm quite fond of it myself. But this China fiasco isn't good news whatever way you slice it. Stop sounding like a spin doctor.

Sure, if you consider packaging and the physical disc to be of value. I tend to find them to be cumbersome things that take up space on my bookshelf.

"I'm guessing you were in one of the welcome areas which is akin to going to a freak show."

Do you not understand why this is a problem? I will admit that the majority of my experience in Second Life is in the welcome areas, and they were a freak show. And since I have a limited gaming schedule, I didn't want to put up with the propositions I got within 10 minutes of logging in, so I left. This being said, I'm not a hand-everything-to-me kind of player. I enjoy the social network building aspect of MMOs; hence why I played a subpar game like Star Wars Galaxies for 2 years and led a large, successful crafting guild. But the problem with SL for new players is that the sex and the deviancy is all we see. We log in having no clue and are immediately propositioned. Or at least, that was my experience, on three separate tries.

Though Shiningfury's tone might not have been the greatest, I agree with his sentiment that Massively is creating a fake buzz and then acting like the rest of the Internet is following the same trends. They do this quite often, for any new game they take a liking to. Anyone remember the all-Free-Realms-all-the-time coverage? And now that Free Realms really does have a positive buzz, not only on the 'Net, but in mainstream media, Massively is pretty silent on it because it's no longer their obsession of the month.