We Fly Spitfires – MMORPG Blog

I knew a kid with three fingers once who had tried this trick on a pit bull.

Gee-whiz and gee-willikers, another week has pasted us by, this time with plenty of juicy MMORPG and gaming related tid-bits being thrown around for discussion by the blogosphere like a pack of hungry Dobermans would a piece of raw meat. I’ve had the odd time when my articles have been in that situation and, unless you’re Australian and blessed with the racial ability to tame wild animals a lá Crocodile Dundee, there isn’t much you can do about it. Fortunately this time much of the controversy stemmed from Penny Arcade and not yours truly. Time to kick back and get the popcorn.

Read more →

There is nothing on this Earth more geeky than a World of Warcraft headset. I must have one.

Not long after I first starting playing Everquest 2 I began afresh on the European PvP server Darathar and met a lovely bunch of blood thirsty bastards. We formed a guild together (all of my buddies from Splitpaw and their’s from whatever game they were last banned from) called The Mutineers and embarked on a hand-holding, tune-whistling, flower skipping journey of scandalous PvP havoc and hell raising. It was also the first time I ever used voice chat.

Read more →

Close but not the pirates I'm talking about

Another interesting week in the MMORPG blogosphere has flown past. This time we got to see Blizzard crush some dastardly pirates (score one for capitalism), some controversial information revealed about Warhammer 40K (Space Marines from the start? Yes? No? Who knows!), and APB hitting the headlines for, well, sucking and dying after squandering loads of cash. The MMO industry may be many things but it’s definitely always interesting.

Read more →

I consider myself a pretty boy nerd in real life

Macs. I have mixed feelings about them. Sure, they don’t crash, they’re reliable and painless to use and every interaction is an incredibly slick and lubricated experience right from the moment you remortgage your house to buy one. However, they’re also soulless contraptions that rob you of any sense of individuality or accomplishment (I feel like a champion every time I get my PC to successfully boot and love to throw around expressions like “defrag”, “format” and “Blue Screen Of Death”). Also everything is always prefixed with a lower case “i” and that really bugs me. Oh and they don’t run MMOs. At all.

Read more →

One day I'm going to get a real We Fly Spitfires badge and use it to impress people I meet in the street.

Continuing with my quest to deliver the most sexy and stylish blog possible (yes, even inanimate electronic objects can be sexy), I’ve put some more minor updates to the site live today. Probably the biggest change (for me anyway) is the use of Typekit to render the main title font and sidebar headers. Utilising fonts on the web is a real pain currently due to distribution issues and what not and previously I was using some code to generate my title fonts as images using PHP. Not only was that becoming a burden on my server due to increased traffic (and spam… lots and lots of spam) but it also makes the site slower to download for the user. Now everything should be a bit quicker and slicker.

Other changes include a more attractive nav and new social media links beneath the header. Not a massive change but a welcome one nonetheless. Oh and all of the adverts are now gone too.

Feel free to let me know your thoughts, likes or dislikes or if you encounter any bugs (I’d be really grateful if anyone got the chance to check the site on an iPad – not sure how the fonts will render on it).

Anyway, that’s enough of my rambling. We all know why you’re here! Let the link loveth commencify:

Read more →

We've only got one Earth so make the most of it - stay in and play video games.

One of the things that always attracts me to the MMORPG genre is the concept of the virtual world. To log on and exist as a digital representation of oneself in a completely fictitious yet vibrant and functioning world is probably as close a thing as we’re going to come to virtual reality any time soon. The first time you wander around a city and encounter a group of players dancing for absolutely no reason, bump into someone wearing awesome gear you’ve never seen before or accidentally overhear a couple cybering in a quiet alleyway make you really appreciate the hidden gems of the eccentric world you now inhabit. These small encounters create a sense of randomness, a sense of freedom and, probably most importantly, a sense of virtual community.

Read more →

Choke point not blocked. Amateur. /rolleyes

Zergling rush. Protoss Photon Cannon cheese. Build orders. Choke points. Kekekeke. I’m slowly losing my sanity to Starcraft 2 multiplayer. Funny thing is, I can’t decide if I totally love the game or utterly detest it. I’m really not very good at it but my mildly competitive nature and stubborn streak is preventing me from giving up. I must conquer Battle.net and it plagues my dreams. SCV 8, build barracks. 11, upgrade Command Center. 18, launch attack… I think my head’s going to explode.

I haven’t had much time to play MMOs the past seven days but that doesn’t mean the blogs have stopped churning out excellent and captivating articles. SCV 9, proceed with link love.

Read more →