We Fly Spitfires – MMORPG Blog

Pandas and kung fu. A natural combination by anyone's standards.

A few weeks ago it was revealed that Blizzard had trademarked the name “Mists of Pandaria” and ever since then imaginations have been running wild as to what it’s all about. Just like most people, I’m reckoning that it’s the name of the next World of Warcraft expansion, something which makes perfect sense to me. Blizzard love their humour and also delight in giving players what they want without always being the most original in their attempts (which is exactly why I think project Titan will turn out to be World of Starcraft – but I digress). Seeing as how I balls up my original thoughts on Cataclysm many moons ago (I called it a hoax… turns out I was kinda wrong), I figured this time I’d get in their early and announce my predictions for Mists of Pandaria before it’s even been upgraded from rumour status.

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Diablo 3. The MMORPG of tomorrow.

For a long time people have pondered the idea of MMOs that didn’t utilise the traditional Holy Trinity model of playing (i.e. groups requiring a tank, healer and DPS classes… although interesting enough the original Holy Trinity included crowd control instead of DPS but I digress) and wondered if games could ever exist without it. While some MMORPGs skirted around this idea of trying something new, to my knowledge none of ever fully succeeded in breaking away from it. Yet. Indeed, I believe that Blizzard are going to be the first to do so and, just like the huge number of industry trends they set with WoW (love ‘em or hate ‘em), I have little doubt that they are ultimately going to be the ones responsible for killing the Holy Trinity off for good.

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EVE Online. Where being an investment banker makes you bad ass.

So apparently there was another bank heist in EVE Online, this time the biggest, craziest, most scandalicious ever seen in New Eden (they always say that though). Except heist is completely the wrong word for it because using that term conjures up connotations of an exciting bank job undertaken by a team of charismatic scoundrels (probably sporting pencil thin moustaches, slicked back hair and suave British accents), fighting against the odds to break into some deeply secured bank vault and then escaping with their lives after an exhilarating fire fight. That didn’t happen here.

Instead what really happened was a scam, pure and simple, and a pretty obvious one at that. Based upon the classic Ponzi scheme (he says as if he’s an old hand at conning people), the two chaps who perpetrated the fraud, Mordor and Eddie, ran a simple business of offering to accept other player’s investment and then paying out 5% interest on their funds back to them every week, y’know just like a bank. If any banks in the world were actually offering 5% interest that is. After a few months though the dirty duo closed up shop, said cheerio, and walked off with all the money everyone had ever deposited with them.

Well duh.

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