MMO Weekly Part 2

16 Sep 2008 at 10:30:34 by Jeff Hollis

In another story from the “Who Cares?” department, comes this treat: if you sign up quickly, you can become a Founding Member of the upcoming Hello Kitty Online. I can see the truly hardcore now; “Yeah, I was in the Ultima Online beta, I played some hardcore EQ on the Rallos Zek server, I was a Warlord in WoW back when it meant something, and I'm a Founder in HKO.”

[Editor's Note: if any 9 year old girls are reading this article, and you've been offended by the previous comments, which were intrinsically dismissive of Hello Kitty Online, we sincerely apologize.]

In this bizarre “study” of racism in virtual works, researchers using light-skinned and dark-skinned avatars concluded that race plays a role, even online. Utilizing the virtual world There, Inc., social psychologists from Northwestern University asked for either easy, or bizarrely difficult favors from random players. They concluded that dark-skinned avatars were less likely to be granted the difficult favors. Gamers promptly criticized the study on two grounds. First, the difficult favor was a genuine pain in the backside, in that participants were asked to teleport the subject around the game, taking pictures of him/her, for more than two hours. Second, some criticized the study because your average in-game avatar is a non-human species -- an elf, a troll, a froglock, a hobbit, or something else – and that might skew the results just a wee little bit.

There was a substantial discussion this week about the racial abilities in WoW's upcoming expansion, Wrath of the Lich King. It's an odd trend, in that the WoW developers are attempting to rebalance weaker abilities, while mitigating some overpowered ones.

It doesn't appear to be working out very well. Some races – the Night Elves and Blood Elves in particular – got some very substantial buffs, while the Dwarves, Humans and Undead got nerfed, in many cases unnecessarily. The Undead really got the raw end of the deal, having their fear-breaking ability reduced to near-uselessness, and having their intrinsic resistance reduced to half that of other races without explanation. Most players are hoping the WoW devs take another pass at this one, before the entire game devolves into Night Elves Versus Blood Elves Online.

In closing, probably the greatest story in MMO gaming this week comes from Warhammer's Paul Barnett. Of course, by “greatest” I of course mean “strangest”, as Paul cannot do anything normally. He's apparently still taking acting lessons from professional wrestlers, as he continues to shout at the camera, wear strange clothing, gesticulate wildly, and make outlandish claims. This week, in preparation for the launch of Warhammer Online, he met up with the guys from The MMO Report and recorded a truly epic video. And by “epic” I of course mean “quirkier than your half-crazy uncle”. You can view it for yourself (totally worth doing, too) right here.

And that's all for this week, kids. I'll be back next week with another weekly update about MMO gaming here on IncGamers. For your daily update on everything strange, funny, and strangely funny in MMO gaming, you can always visit us over WanderingGoblin.com, where we'll give you your daily dose of MMO news, served up with a hot, steaming scoop of humor. For now, ciao!

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