A Green Mushroom

 Patrick Rothfuss is one of my favorite upcoming authors.  His first book The Name of the Wind and is a must read for all fantasy fans.  In anticipation of his new book releasing in early March I thought I would link to one of his awesome gaming posts/comics.  Also, be sure to check out the video this week, it is truly epic. Patrick Rothfuss on the art of the game .  The comic at the end of the post is especially awesome. Syp at Biobreak has interesting stats on the average age of gamers . A cool short story that one of my fellow bloggers drew my attention to.  Don't miss this epic Skyrim video.

I just saw Syp do a post on his top 10 books of 2010 and thought I would do something similar.  Not to steal his thunder, but just because I love to read and I don't write about it on this blog as much as I would like to.  So here are my favorite books that I read in the past year. Old Man's War by John Scalzi An amazing take on space marines and unlike most of the science fiction I've read before.  Reading this and then immediately going back to read Starship Troopers (one of my Heinlein favorites) showed me how the same topic can be covered in completely different ways.  Scalzi is one of my new favorites and his sarcasm keeps me coming back for more. The Night Angel Trilogy by Brent Weeks This gritty take on an assassin's world is simply amazing.  Parts of The Night Angel Trilogy are brutal and actually made me cringe or have to take a break from reading which is a new experience for me.  The lows experienced by the characters and the harsh re...

I've been thinking lots about grabbing Cataclysm when it releases and in the meantime I've been playing the descendants of DoTA to fill my gaming time.  In that vein I found some great articles about the upcoming WoW expansion and DoTA too.  Spinks on the front loaded nature of expansions.  Syp talks about how WoW is like an ex-girlfriend .  A great index of info for WoW players looking to come back after a break. A look at DoTA and the games it has spawned recently. A new Dragon Age 2 trailer that got me excited.

As a group activity for the 2010 Wordcount Blogathon bloggers were encouraged to write about blogs they can't live without.  I missed the May 10th date when we were supposed to write on the subject because I was out of town.  I think it's a great idea so I'm going to do it anyway. Here we go, my top 5 blogs: Professor Beej - Extremely intelligent writing about all things media.  He covers a wide breadth of knowledge about books, movies, television, technology, gaming, and the internet.  Variety is the spice of life when it comes to the topics Beej covers. Bio Break - Syp is a MMO gamer who likes to share his thoughts.  Half of his posts are random thoughts throughout his day, but they are always interesting and worth reading. Tobold - One of the most well known MMO bloggers currently.  He always gets a ton of comments and is great at generating discussion.  Read the posts and the comments when you visit Tobold's site. Copyblogger - As I tr...

There were two great posts by Syp this week.  The first discussed escapism .  He slants his post towards Lord of the Rings and LOTRO but I think the same concepts apply to all gaming.  Very worthy of your time. At the very least, take a look at his arguments for investing in a fantasy world.  It will give you some ammunition next time someone says playing video games is a waste of time. The other post is about explaining a MMO to a non-gamer .  Syp's mom asked him to explain what he does with blogging, which in turn led to an explanation of MMO gaming in general. Spinks had a rant which turned into a really interesting analysis of where social gaming is taking us .  Spinks' posts tend to be longer, but they usually have a unique take on a given situation. There you go, some Sunday reading for this week.

I'm keeping an eye on Ubisoft and their DRM.  I really hate DRM because it ends up hurting customers who pay for the product and basically adds incentives for pirates to acquire games illegally.  Ubisoft launched their new DRM with Assassin's Creed 2 for PC last month.  It requires an active internet connection to play.  This makes no sense since AC2 is a single player game. Syp had a great summary of the situation up over at Bio Break.  Also worth looking at are the two Joystiq articles about Ubisoft DRM running into some trouble already. All worthy of your reading time.  Also, Penny-Arcade's cyclical argument with a literal strawman .

Sometimes I get caught up in the meta-gaming.  I read all about games, game theory, development, new ideas, new releases, and everything else relating to this hobby.  So, sometimes I forget to play games. It's not entirely my fault.  There are so many excellent sources of information.  I love to read Joystiq , Massively , Penny-Arcade , Tobold , and Syp .  Those are probably my favorites websites on the internet.  My love of meta-gaming and constant readership of these sites is the reason I decided to start this blog. Whenever I really get into a game I'll look up all the theorycrafting behind making my characters the best they can be.  I remember spending hours of time looking up the best gear and talent builds in WoW when I used to play.  I like having all the information when it comes to a subject I'm interested in. This is my long winded approach to saying that I haven't been playing games enough lately.  Nothing has really grabbed...

Syp from Bio Break had a post up about a month ago about playing multiple MMOs.  Some people do it, some do not. I am one who does not, generally.  I'll make an exception, from time to time, when a new MMO is released that I am excited about.  I'll give it a month of my time even if I am currently invested in another MMO.  I'll only play the first (free) month before I make a decision and choose one MMO over the other. My problem with playing multiple MMOs at the same time is that I feel like I'm wasting money.  If I have 60 hours each month to play an MMO and can pay $15 for that month of play time, then that is great.  If I add another MMO to the mix I end up paying $30 each month for the same 60 hours of entertainment. I understand the desire to have different gaming experiences.  I play (and pay for) all sorts of games.  Some months I buy multiple new games.  I treat MMOs differently because of their recurring subscription fees. ...

The other week Syp asked if there were any ideas from MMOs that people would like to see attempted again, even if the MMO they are currently in isn't that great. Although yesterday I gave reasons why I have had trouble playing EVE Online there is one thing that I absolutely loved about it.  The server structure.  EVE is one world.  If you are playing EVE you are in the same world as everyone else playing EVE.  This has huge ramifications because it means all 300,000 people who play EVE end up interacting with one another indirectly. Compare this to a game like WoW where you have a separate world on each server and no way to interact between worlds.  To transfer to another server actually costs $25 every time you want to do it.  I have friends who have been playing WoW since it came out who I have never actually played with because they happen to be on a different server.  World of Warcraft is actually Worlds of Warcraft. The other server struct...