Posts with tag conversation

Blizzard has increasingly programmed NPC conversations into the game as a means of adding flavor to the world and personality to the characters with whom you interact, and some of them are just amazing. In the classic game, these conversations started off very simple, with Stormwind children running around driving everyone crazy with arguments over which misbegotten whelp had stolen the other's doll or something like that. In Outland, you could catch performances of stand-up comedy in the World's End Tavern in Shattrath. By Wrath of the Lich King, mortally wounded NPCs insulted each other from separate bunks in Crusader's Pinnacle, and major lore figures argued about interfaction strife at the Argent Tournament. But I think it's tough to argue that Cataclysm hasn't been a million times better.

For my money, it's tough to beat the flavor conversations you tend to hear in goblin outposts (yeah, I've been on a goblin kick lately), including the one above, which occurs in the aftermath of the Azshara quest Mystery of the Sarcen Stone. Finding blood elves and goblins together is a recipe for comedy either way -- the two races could not be more different -- but this is what happens when the blood elves' preening sense of history runs headlong into the goblins' morally questionable pragmatism.

What's your favorite flavor conversation in the game?

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Last week we reported that 38 Studios, a company working on its own MMO property, had picked up the Azeroth Advisor, a custom newsletter directed towards players of World of Warcraft. At the time, we were slightly confused -- why would another gaming company want to purchase a guide written to promote and help players of a competitor's game? To get the answer, we went straight to the top, and sat down to talk with Brett Close, CEO of 38 Studios, about the reasons behind his company's purchase of the Azeroth Advisor and the technology behind it.

Last week, Curt Schilling, the company's founder, spoke on The Instance podcast about the buyout (that took place in May of this year), and what Mentor Media's newsletter and technology had to offer 38 Studios, so we asked Close about that, including how they planned to extend the custom newsletters to games that didn't have WoW's Armory and why they want to support players of a competitor's MMO. And we also talked about the fact that the newsletter is going free and why they decided to start giving it away.

The conversation with 38 Studios' CEO starts right after the break.

Gamers on the Street logs onto U.S. servers to get the word from the front on what's going on in and around the World of Warcraft.

The WoW roleplayer is a strange creature -- in a game universe almost completely designed for the non-roleplayer (there are enough pop culture references to make anyone sensitive to anachronisms apoplectic), they soldier on insider RP servers, taking their time leveling up, and having perhaps much more fun than anyone who races towards the endgame might otherwise have.

So for this Gamers on the Street, I decided to head to Moon Guard, an RP server. I had hoped to chat about what players were expecting for season 4, and maybe find out what casual players thought of all the new things coming in Wrath of the Lich King, but when I sent out my query for interviewees, what I found were two roleplayers. people who were taking the game at their own pace and having fun doing it.

I also made sure, due to past reader comments, to speak to Alliance this time. After the jump, meet two roleplayers who are playing the game their own way.