Breakfast Topic: Would you play WoW in an offline mode?

Azeroth is filled with players who rarely interact with their fellow citizens. Perfectly content to mind their own business and their own goals, they group infrequently and socialize rarely. Sometimes their introverted ways are dictated by personal scheduling or other playstyle constraints. Often, it's a matter of personal choice. So it stands to reason that some solo players might actually prefer to play the game in a setting removed from other players –- an offline mode, so to speak.

Me, I would miss the living, breathing world around me if Azeroth were offline. Even when I don't choose to group up or converse with others, I enjoy seeing other players going about their own business and watching guildchat burble across my chat box. I'll occasionally refresh a character that's been stranded on a realm my friends have moved away from, but I never last long before I drift back to a realm with friends.

Would you leap at the chance to play WoW in isolation with an offline mode? What if you couldn't switch back and forth, so that once you began playing offline, that character had to stay offline? Tags: featured, game-discussion, gamer-discussion, offline, solo, world-of-warcraft-discussion, world-of-warcraft-topics, wow-discussion, wow-hot-topics, wow-issues, wow-topics

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Breakfast Topic: Where would you like to play hooky in Azeroth today?

Good morning. Today's your lucky day, boys and girls. You get to play hooky from school or work, and you get to do it in Azeroth come to life!

Your guidelines: While this is Azeroth as if it had come to life, you are not your character –- this is the real-world you who's slipping into Azeroth. For the purposes of faction balance, you may assume that you appear to be the appropriate faction and race to be accepted by the inhabitants of the city or land you choose to visit. You can also communicate with the residents.

However, aggressive monsters will remain dangerous to you, and since you are real you and not your character, we don't recommend choosing a zone where you could be attacked by anything at all. (Unless, of course, you're actually qualified to battle these creatures yourself -– in which case, do send photos to lisa@wowinsider.com.) It's probably not a good idea to try stepping into a general zone or instance, unless you're certain you know a safe spot. But what about a city? A quiet fishing hole out of aggro range? A sightseeing tour via zeppelin, or a boating expedition along the shores of Krasarang?

Your advantage is the gift of instant materialization. Wherever you'd like to go, there you'll be. If you'd like to spend the afternoon reading under a tree on a floating island in Nagrand, we can make that happen. If you'd like to party in Goldshire, we'll get you there without braving wolves, spiders, and bandits (although what you'll have to brave once you're there is up to you). You can travel about only if the real you could manage it using Azeroth's usual modes of transportation.

What would you like to see? Who would you try to meet -- and do you think you could talk your way in to see them?

Where would you like to play hooky in Azeroth today? Tags: featured, game-discussion, gamer-discussion, world-of-warcraft-discussion, world-of-warcraft-topics, wow-discussion, wow-hot-topics, wow-issues, wow-topics

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Breakfast Topic: Would Blizzard-run dynamic events work in WoW?

Once upon a time, I served as a guide in EverQuest. Guides were volunteers who went through a training program to become essentially non-staff customer service agents. We retrieved out-of-reach corpses, plucked players from the world geometry, smoothed ruffled feathers during spawn disputes, and a whole host of other GM-ish duties.

But perhaps the most fun thing the CS team did was run loosely scripted roleplaying events. I remember my first event with great fondness, a simple scenario in which we took over the orc NPCs inside the keep of a newbie dungeon zone called Crushbone. After provoking the amazed newbies into charging the keep, we slaughtered them by the dozens (to their delight) and eventually departed as mysteriously as we had appeared. The event remains a highlight of my gaming experience. I'll never forget the astonished shouts of players trying to rally others while explaining that yes, the orcs really had come alive!

With all of World of Warcraft's emphasis on story, I adore the idea of having some tucked-away corner of a zone spring to life under GM control. Of course, with so many realms and millions of players sprawling across the world, staffing such an endeavor on any sort of regular basis would require massive manpower. Could a volunteer crew manage a dynamic events team in today's World of Warcraft? Would you enjoy participating in dynamic events? Would you want the events to focus on nudging along the main story lines or filling in the backstory, or should they stick to bringing some previously unremarkable NPCs to life? If it were possible to bring the same story to every realm, how would you react if you were offline or otherwise unable to participate when it happened? Tags: dynamic, dynamic-events, featured, game-discussion, gamer-discussion, gm-run-event, live, live-events, roleplaying, rp, world-of-warcraft-discussion, world-of-warcraft-topics, wow-discussion, wow-hot-topics, wow-issues, wow-topics

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Would you like to help stir the Pot?

As you’ve probably seen, I’m in a massive time crunch right now, as are the rest of the Pot crew, and hence the update schedule for the Pot has dropped off a bit.

Hence, I’m wondering if anyone from the MMO blogging community would be interested in coming on board as a volunteer curator, to help me out posting updates once or twice a week – as you see interesting things that deserve a wider audience.

You’d need to have enough time to keep up with a LOT of MMO blogs – not just a personal RSS feed, but an overview of the entire community – good writing ability, and be reliable.

If that sounds like fun, let me know at mmomeltingpot@gmail.com , and we can discuss further from there.

This is still an early-stage idea – it may turn out that it’s hard to fit another member into the Pot’s staff, or some other reason prevents us from doing this. So if we don’t choose you in the end, please don’t be offended! But I think it’s an idea that could potentially turn out really well.

Interested? Let me know!

Tagged as: stirring the pot

If you enjoyed this article, check out our other posts from these categories: Maintenance Mondays

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