I put in some good hours in WoW today, doing heroic Nexus, Utgarde Keep, and Violet Hold.  All three were successful, with only a little trouble with one boss in VH, and Ingvar in UK.  I feel pretty good about it, I didn't have too much trouble and I only have about 1300 spell power.  I think with some easy upgrades, I should be able to take just about anything.  Tertiary (my boyfriend) was an awesome tank too, I was impressed!

We also did a few regular dungeons this weekend, including Culling of Stratholme, Oculus, and Utgarde Pinnacle.  Stratholme was so awesome, it was such a Warcraft III flashback.  Fighting alongside Arthas was totally badass.  Not to mention fighting Mal'Ganis again...how rad is that. Anyway, it was cool to have an active weekend with lots of accomplishments in WoW.  I can see my excitement dwindling a bit for the game though, now that I'm done with leveling and everything feels like a treadmill to go back to raiding.  We'll see though...I'm enjoying it at the moment.

Thanks to Sam Houston, CM for GamerDNA, there is now a comprehensive list of game industry folks who use Twitter.

Ryan Shwayder of Nerfbat brought up an interesting question:

Wondering why so many people use Twitter... I don't care what people are doing throughout their entire day. I already have a blog for this.

That's generally one of the first things people say when I tell them I'm a Twitter addict.  "Oh great, a place where people update every time they go to the bathroom or are eating food". Admittedly, I used to say the same thing before I developed a group of interesting people that I follow.  Twitter as a solo experience is an incredibly dismal and almost pointless experience.  And, unfortunately when you first register for Twitter - you have no followers or followees.  It makes for a boring timeline of conversation, which means when someone starts tweeting their stream looks like this:

Cuppy is going to the mall today!  Yay!
Cuppy is excited that she dinged 80!
Cuppy thinks that San Diego is beautiful.  Wearing shorts in January = CRAZY

Once you follow a few people, you start seeing a conversation take place.

Cuppy is wondering if she should watch Milk or Slumdog Millionaire.
scoobydoo @cuppy You should definitely watch Milk, it's a fantastic movie.
Feconix @scoobydoo @cuppy I don't know, Slumdog Millionaire was pretty good - but I recommend Man on Wire instead.
Cuppy @scoobydoo @feconix thanks guys!
Cuppy is going to go watch Man on Wire because she trusts @feconix's opinion about movies.

That's when Twitter starts being powerful. Most people don't realize that Twitter is all about conversations.  It's about having a limit to how much you can say, and creatively formatting responses, statements, and questions.  You get your own feed to start and when you don't follow anybody, you only see your own tweets.  If you start following people, you get a list of status updates from those people (think Facebook's status updates).  People start following you and seeing you on their feeds.  Conversation starts when people reply to you by using @username, and everyone joins in on the communication.  Best part is that it's asynchronous, so you don't have to be sitting in front of it like a live chat.  You can always view your replies and see what people have been saying to you, even if it's been weeks since you've logged in.  Think of them as trackbacks.

So, to answer Ryan's question - you don't actually have a blog for this.  A blog (in it's macro form) serves a very different purpose.  Granted, you do have conversations that take place in response to your blog posts - but it's not the same conversational feel.  Twitter is a means for quick questions and chatter that you don't see on typical blogs.  You don't experience that until you are following people who actually tweet though.

There are dozens of reasons why Twitter is a great means for communication within the game industry.  First of all, developers can engage in chat with their users to get feedback.  Users like to follow game companies to get quick tidbits of news in a managable and 'replyable' format.  Devs chatting with devs is also a very useful mechanism for soliciting feedback and asking advice.  Twitter is also a great way to network and meet people.  It's a nice way to reach out to your users and make each one feel listened to and important.  Twitter can be as personal or as hands-off as you want it to be.  You can even feed your blog RSS in (using a service like TwitterFeed) to simply blast out a message to all your followers when you've updated your blog.  It's also a great way to see who is talking about your product.  Doing a Twitter search for your game, company, or product name is a valuable way to see conversations pertaining to something relevant to you.  And you don't have to be a follower of someone to reply to them.  I often send a @username "Welcome to Metaplace!' when I see someone chatting about their new access to the Metaplace beta.  I've offered support to users and directed them where they need to go for help.  I've done some minor PR and marketing.

Really, if you're ignoring Twitter - you are probably doing yourself or your company a disservice (unless of course you have a marketing team who pays attention to the Twitter buzz, but even then - it pays to know what users are saying).  There have been billions of tweets from users thusfar, and they're probably talking about you.

Twitter isn't an alternative to blogging, it's a meaningful addition.  It's another way to connect with your readers, to garner inspiration for blog posts, to enhance the mini-community you have created through blogging.  And, it does indeed take some time to "get it" but once you do, watch out for addiction.  I expect we'll be seeing elements of Twitter moving their way over to mainstream blogging soon, and this article agrees.

Follow me on Twitter if you sign up, and for those who want a nice standalone client for their desktop - try either TweetDeck or Twhirl - both of which are cross platform Adobe Air apps.

Saturday night, Luke and I made a goal that we were going to hit 80 before logging off.  It was also his birthday, so we figured it would be a good night to do it.  We were about halfway through Storm Peaks, so we decided to finish it out and both of us dinged 80 within an hour of each other.  Yay!  Now I can finally do the heroics and other fun stuff that people have been doing for over a month already.

The first thing I did after buying my new abilities was respec back to resto.  Boomkin, it's been a good run - and I'll probably consider you again when dualspeccing comes out, but for now I'm back to the tree.  Here is my armory right now.  My gear is pretty much crap, about 1317 +spell power when not in Tree form.  I'm looking forward to logging in and doing things other than questing for a little while :)

Last night I finally got my epic mount, Pawtopsy's Swift Flight Form.  Holy crap, is it fast!  I flew all across the world in rapid speed collecting herbs and it was so fun.  I can't believe how long I've been missing out on this glorious moment.

It's actually funny how it happened.  I logged on with about 3000 gold.  I have been trying a new method of selling glyphs in order to make cash, which brought in about 500 gold.  I then had 3500g after going to the mailbox and getting my successful auction cash.  I then saw someone in Trade channel who said "WTB Ace, Two, Five, Six of Nobles for 1200g each".  I happened to have the mats to make one Darkmoon Card, and got the Six of Nobles.  I sold it to him for 1200g.  I then had 4700g.  I then went and bought a few stacks of herbs and made another one, hoping that I could get another Nobles card to sell to him.  I did, but it was a Four of Nobles.  Not one that he needed.

I ended up finding someone in Org to buy the Four of Nobles from me for 1200g so that I could go buy my Artisan Riding Skill and shift into a fast birdie.  It was AWESOME.  That's about all I did last night other than make more glyphs.  I think it might be a good business for me to be selling these glyphs.  =)

Last night I finished up Zul'Drak and got the achievement for completing all 100 quests.  I must say, after Dragonblight, Zul'Drak was such a huge letdown.  The quests were basically uninspired and it seemed like Blizzard brought back the shitty droprates.  I'll never think that shitty droprates are fun.  A mob called a Blood of Mamtoth should PROBABLY drop a "Blood of Mamtoth" everytime right?  Nope.  Sort of frustrating.

I will say that I liked the big snow leopard with glowing blue eyes (Harkoa) and her quest line was pretty decent.  But for the most part, the zone left a lot to be desired.  On next to Storm Peaks, and then Icecrown!

I'm trying a new method of making money, which is actually selling glyphs.  Basically ever since I maxed out Inscription, I've only used it for researching new glyphs and for making Darkmoon cards for myself and for others.  I haven't actually been making glyphs for other people.  I've now checked the AH and noticed there is a need for certain glyphs, so I started selling them along with Nobles cards last night.  I now have about 3500 gold, so I'm not too far off from getting my epic flight form.  I'm so excited to fly fast!

Okay so, my curiosity has now gotten the better than me.  I've noticed a severe drop in comments in the past 6 months here on this blog.  I'm still getting the same amount of visits per day, but almost 0 comments per blog post.

So here are my theories:

1) I'm boring now and nobody has anything to say to me.  I don't post any deep in-depth design considerations anymore and I'm not being very controversial.
2) Everyone uses RSS readers and nobody wants to click on the link and actually go to a site to comment.
3) Nobody likes me anymore because of all my non-gaming posts (Prop 8 in particular).
4) Something isn't working with my Disqus commenting system I added in December.  Maybe you guys ARE commenting but they're not showing up?

So here are my questions - and if you read this I CHALLENGE you to answer them ;)

• If you are a blogger, have you noticed that people are commenting less?
• Why do you, personally, never comment here?  Do I smell bad? 

Sweet, thanks.

Yay for being back in San Diego and away from the frigid cold of Minnesota!

I spent a few hours getting some quality WoW time in yesterday.  Pawtopsy is now level 78, and it feels like my experience flow is coming faster now.  I'm still the slowest leveler alive though.  Zul'Drak has been a fairly unexciting place to quest so far.  The only exciting thing so far has been seeing the Lich King, and that was after a questline that felt too long and not epic enough.  I also had a couple friends help us with the arena questline, so I now have an awesome Chilly Slobberknocker (worst item name ever?) which was a big upgrade from my other staff.  I'm a little worried about hitting level 80, because I don't know if I'll have the interest to keep playing for long after that.  I already have so many other things that I want to do with my time, and so many other books and games stacking up that are competing for my attention.

Right now though, WoW is still fun.  I will have a lot of quality heroic and dungeon running time after hitting 80, and time to roam around achievement hunting without feeling the pull of leveling.  I also want to try Wintergrasp and still need my epic flight form.  Luke got his epic mount while I was in Minnesota, and now I'm jealous and want mine too.  I only have about 2,000 gold right now though, so I have a long time to go still.  Oh well. =/  So far I haven't made hardly any money off of selling Darkmoon cards.  I was expecting the Nobles cards to fly out the door, but they're not moving.  Ah well.  Lunar Festival is coming soon too, so that will be awesome because there will be more achievements to earn ^_^

I'm looking forward to moving to Icecrown and other areas soon.  Zul'Drak has been drab and gloomy looking and not all that interesting.  Maybe it will get better as I progress east through the zone. =)  We'll see! 

Unforgiven War, a text-based military MMORPG has had over 100,000 registrations.  It doesn't surprise me at all that the text space is still an intriguing one to gamers regardless of missing the graphics. 

I haven't tried it personally, because I don't care for military games, but it's worth a look.

UnforgivenWar Beta Testing a Huge Success

December 29th, 2008 (San Anslemo, CA) - Nvinium Games, Inc. announced today that its free to play text based browser game, Unforgivenwar, has received over 100,000 player registrations since the start of its Beta Testing Phase. It has become one of the fastest growing MMORPG communities on the web. As many as 2900 people are actively playing the game and interacting with each other daily. Nvinium Games, recently launched the Unforgivenwar game application to work on both the Facebook and MySpace Community Platforms.

The key to the success for Unforgivenwar lies not only in its depth of game play, but more importantly in the Community interaction with each other, as well as the real time support given by the Unforgivenwar Support Team.

"Unlike most text based games, our utilization of technology such as real time chat allows both members and guests to see activity in the community.
This interaction makes the game much more exciting than simple static forums," said Matt Abrams, CEO of Nvinium Games.

Text based games have seen a major increase in popularity over the past 12 months and have proven to be an important part of social networking communities. "Web based, community networking games are really the next major wave of the Web 2.0 Social System, and games such as Unforgivenwar.com are proving that through continued rapid growth,"
stated social network visionary Joe Abrams Chairman, Nvinium Games. Abrams is well known for Co-Founding Euniverse (Intermix), the predecessor company to Myspace, as well as the Co-Founder of The Software Toolworks which was one of the largest game publishers in the 90's.

Unforgivenwar is now positioning itself to reach an even greater number of players as it enters its final phase of beta testing. Players can participate in the ongoing Beta Testing of Unforgivenwar by registering at the official site http://unforgivenwar.com.