A few select samples of my writing. I wrote for NotAddicted.com for 2 years before branching off to my own blog. It was a tongue in cheek MMO parody site, with columns such as "Ask the Barrens" etc. My very first article for them was a preview of the Burning Crusade beta. I always tried to crank out full length pieces, rather than 2 paragraph drivel. I really get a lot of satisfaction from writing, and think I'm pretty good at it.
MMO design & theory:
Trade Skills - An overview of how MMO tradeskill systems could be overhauled. What makes them interesting or dull...
Crafting Interfaces - Not "crafting an interface", but "the interface for crafting". Blacksmithing, etc.
Creative Writing:
Non-Fiction - Perhaps one of my favorite articles I've ever written. It's not actually an article, but instead a short story telling the tale of Daniel Mackerty, a quest designer at Blizzard. This is the story of how he came up with the idea of daily quests. I understand why daily quests have evolved, but at the time they were introduced, it just seemed like the most grind-tastic thing I could possibly imagine. We already run dungeons over and over, to have us do the same quests every day, just... well, it came out here. I cranked this out one morning after getting to school, and before teaching kindergarten classes. Yeah, don't ask.
Non-Fiction II - Where the first one just fell out of my fingertips onto the keyboard, I actively sat down and tried to make myself write another one. This is the "bleak future of humanity" story where Blizzard takes over the government, and people never log out. : ) I think the actual thought of life evolving to be just avatars inside a system is hardly a unique thought (the matrix, zomg!), but the theoretical implications ("Nobody was bothering to build new real systems, since everything was happening on a theoretical area of space that only existed on magnetic drives in a server farm. The theoretical systems realized in the game world were years ahead of anything in the real world, but they never actually bothered to log out and build any of it. Entire generations of computer hardware were postulated on and improved upon time and again. They just refined the ideas over and over in game. ") actually makes for an interesting idea.
MMO reviews & commentary:
A Look at LotRO's Beta Weekend Event - An MMO preview for our readers. Lots of screenshots and a general impression of the game. I make a lot of comparisons to WoW, because that's what I know.
LotRO Retail (10 day pass) - Brief followup for LotRO, with the full retail version.
Warhammer Beta - Calling this post "a bit coarse" would be putting it lightly. I wasn't impressed with the beta at all. I actually was thrown out of the Warhammer beta for this review, in fact, but wether it was 'violating the NDA' or just saying the game was crap will remain an eternal mystery. Other people broke the NDA (the game was a hype magnet, and a long time coming), but focused on the positive aspects. They got to stay in the beta, because they were spreading good vibes. I crapped all over the beta and was promptly shown the door.
Warhammer Retail - I came full circle on this. They fixed a lot that was broken in the beta, and I gave them credit where due. I played Warhammer for a good solid month, but it began to wear thin again around tier 3, so I cancelled. At the time of this writing, though (pre order early start), it was looking pretty solid, though.
I've been writing stuff for over 3 years, and really enjoy it. It's hard to select just a few entries out of the many hundreds I've written, but I think this gives a pretty good sampling of various styles.
