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Twitter Weekly Updates for 2010-07-10

Happy Independence Day! Be thankful for what you've been given by those who have gone before! #
Waiting for fireworks with the brats. Excitement is high. #
@PhilVillarreal Amazing. I'm really Cringer. That makes me feel creepy. in reply to PhilVillarreal #
Built a public life-maintenance calendar in GCal. https://liverealnow.net/y7ph #
@ericabiz makes webinars fun! Even if her house didn't collapse in the middle of it. #
BOFH + idiot = bad combination #

FINCON Friday

When this goes live, I’ll be on the road to the Financial Bloggers Conference outside of Chicago. That translates to a day off here.

Monday, I’ll be back with a whole bucket full of bloggy goodness.

Carnivals

Misc

I spent the day consoling (read: napping with) a tonsillitis-infected little monster.

Live Real, Now was included in two carnivals last week:

Festival of Frugality #327 hosted by Budgeting with the Bushmans

Yakezie Carnival – Setting Your Clocks Edition hosted by 20 and Engaged

Thanks to all of the hosts for including my posts.

Get More Out of Live Real, Now

There are so many ways you can read and interact with this site.

You can subscribe by RSS and get the posts in your favorite news reader. I prefer Google Reader.

You can subscribe by email and get, not only the posts delivered to your inbox, but occasional giveaways and tidbits not available elsewhere.

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Have a great week!

Happy Form

If you don’t know why you are hear, please read about the 21 Day Happiness Training Challenge.

Can EverQuest Next Compete with World of Warcraft?

News

Legions of MMORPGs have graced the internet to do battle against Blizzard’s World of Warcraft, yet no challenger has bested

everquestnext_human (Photo credit: NewGameNetwork)

Blizzard’s massively multiplayer online juggernaut. Huge marketing campaigns and years of development by the makers of games like Star Wars: The Old Republic and Rift have left players less than satisfied, with an initial big burst of player excitement and eventual failure.

Every software developer that creates an MMO that tries to take a slice of Blizzard’s pie invariably ends up as a “free to play” model. The latest MMORPG slated to try and take a shot at fighting Blizzard’s dominance is EverQuest Next. The developers are looking to lure players to EverQuest from a variety of other games such as EVE Online and Warcraft, but the design of the game seems to straddle a few different genres.

As with other game releases, the developers at Sony Online Entertainment have tried to suggest that their game will be “new” and “different.” It’s not difficult to understand why skepticism is high. Every game that has seen release in the past few years has had developers boast the same and has crashed and burned just a month or so after the release.

Players of EverQuest Next will find a game focus that includes some familiar fantasy elements of an MMO game (like elves), but developers have sought to step away from the traditional, linear questing experience and offer some world-building opportunities for players (much like EVE Online). One of the interesting features expected of the game is the ability for players to impact permanent change upon the landscape.

For example, during wartime a player might decide to build a wall somewhere, and he or she can accomplish this and actually have that wall erected as a permanent feature in the game world. Similarly, when players fight one another or monsters, a spell or explosion that creates a hole in the world will remain permanently. One of the developers likened this feature to the idea of putting Minecraft into an MMORPG.

Although absolutely everything in the world can’t be destroyed (certain structures will be permanent), this opportunity to build, create, and destroy represents a jump forward from the same opportunities players have had in games like EVE Online. World of Warcraft has occasionally offered players the opportunity to change the landscape, but not on a regular basis. Such changes have generally been implemented after a reset with all the realms taken offline, after which players would log in and see the changes.

However, the lack of appreciable impact on the environment hasn’t stopped players from flocking to World of Warcraft for nearly a decade, and EverQuest Next will need to bring an amazing player experience to lure away current players as well as retain them. The ebb and flow of Warcraft’s player base often coincides with the new release of another MMORPG, but after a month or so the new game’s servers are ghost towns. It won’t take long to see whether EverQuest Next can compete with World of Warcraft.