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All too often I find myself debating lore with people from one of two camps. In one camp we have the lore-nut, “All other game elements must curtail to Lore!” brigade. With the other camp, it’s the game-mechanics, lorelol, “all I want to do is click on things, lore is irrelevant” group.

To the lore extremists, I have to remind them that this is not a book, it’s a game. Lore, mechanics, platform, at the end of the day what is it? It’s a game and that is what everything else must curtail to.
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Since hearing about “Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning” I have known what type of class I wanted to play… Ranged DPS. And not a mage, mind you, but some sort of ranger type. Something that was designed to fight from a distance, yet still sturdy enough to survive if forced to engage in melee.

This was admittedly strange since I don’t normally play ranged DPS. What did it for me was playing old-school Alterac Valley on my hunter alt in World of Warcraft. I was used to healing, tanking, and melee dps, so to stand behind the line picking people off was new and great fun.

“I’ve got to make this my primary class in WAR!”, I thought, and so, on a lark the other night, I decided to do some reading and figure out what exactly I was going to play. Human ranged DPS? Dwarf? What was out there?
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As much as I’m sure the title of this post will have nanny bots blocking my website in no time, it’s a concept worth discussing.

What I mean by “insertion” is, “How does the character start when entering the game for the very first time?” Where is one first inserted into the game? When loading up Hellgate: London for the very first time I found myself standing in a dead-end at the back of an alley. Monsters blocked the way out.

If one’s looking to just clicky-click and kill things, that’s fine. It’s straight forward, it’s idiot proof. That’s great. If one’s looking to lose oneself in the game however, the starting point is just… inorganic (to use the screenwriting term).
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Just over a week ago, Perpetual Entertainment announced they would be putting their MMORPG “Gods & Heroes: Rome Rising” on “indefinite hold”. In other words, the game is shelved and for all practical purposes canceled.
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It was pointed out to me that in my future-lore post about the Night Elves I left out a significant piece of the puzzle: Tyrande Whisperwind, Malfurion Stormrage’s significant other.

With all eyes on Malfurion it’s easy to forget he’s only half of a greater whole. It is he and Tyrande together who form the true leader of the Night Elves. To say Malfurion will serve as the catalyst for Night Elf civil war is to say Tyrande will as well.
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The Night Elves are heading for civil war, simple as that. (The Dwarves are too, but more on that later.)

The Night Elves up until now have been a selfless race. The druids dedicated themselves to the Green Dragon Flight and the Emerald dream, while everyone else dedicated themselves to protecting the natural world around them while the druids are away. The last priority of the Night Elves was themselves.

But now they’ve lost their immortality, and in the wake of that loss we’ve got Fandral Staghelm splintering off with his Darnassian Night Elves and regrowing the world tree. They already knew this would be in vain; they didn’t care, so they grew it anyway. And now nature itself has been thrown off-balance by their actions. This is flat out heresy for a Night Elf. To throw nature off-balance literally goes against everything they are. The only thing worse would be for them to be delving into the arcane. And while the Darnassians are trying to fix the problem, they still are the ones who caused it in the first place through their own selflish greed.

But… not far away… you have the rest of the Night Elves. The ones who still follow Malfurion’s teachings and recognized “regrowing the world tree” as a selfish act. These are the Night Elves of Moonglade.
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For those of you who don’t know, Chris Avellone began as a level designer for Fallout 2, then would go on to be Co-Lead Designer for the original cancelled Fallout 3 (not the Elder Scrolls IV meets Fallout version currently in development).

So why does Chris matter? Why is he worth mentioning? Because he’s the one who published “The Fallout Bible“.

The guy knows post nuclear apocalypse lore.

So what we have are two simple facts:
Chris Avellone is a post nuclear apocalypse Lore Master.
No one yet has done a real “Post Nuclear Apocalypse” MMO.

A good MMO needs a great lead lore master. It’s the difference between WoW and one of those weird Korean MMO’s your friend played after getting kicked out of his guild. We’ve got the lore master, we’ve got the open niche in the market. Let’s see a “Post Nuclear Apocalypse” MMO.
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When I originally made my “@ Chris Metzen & Alex Afrasiabi” on the World of Warcraft forums it received over 39,000 views and over 330 replies. Within the thread I made one reply, addressing some of the posters comments. Since I think it’s relevant to the first post, I’m posting it here….

As Kisirani, and other developers have mentioned in the past, within development there is a metaphorical “table”. It’s crowded and limited in size, and the goal of any thread like this one is to have Blizzard ask, “Should we make room for this issue?” Blizzard’s resources may be large, but, at the end of the day, they still have a limit. Therefore priority must be made.
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Earlier today I stumbled upon an interview of one of the Lore Masters for “Age of Conan”. Good stuff, and nice to see they’re taking Robert E. Howard’s work seriously.

Linky McLink

“Age of Conan” in itself is interesting as it’s one of the few ‘low fantasy’ games out there. With every other fantasy game being derived from Tolkien, it’s refreshing to see a next generation MMO that isn’t.

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Perusing through the forums at hellgateguru.com I came upon a thread discussing a Hellgate Expansion Idea.

What interested me most was the map. An interesting concept to follow a line, leading somewhere. The developers might not like it though as that would pigeon-hole them into a “What do we do once we reach Point B?” situation.

The specific destinations on the map cause me to raise an eyebrow though. Paris would be tough to do without simply being “more of London”. I fully agree with Rome, a city thick with lore. Cairo? Babylon? Maybe. To me though, this is Hellgate; a game that prominently exhibits the Templar. And if you’re going to use the Templar then you need to use Jerusalem.
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