GameZig

Mike Morhaime no doubt has done a superb job in leading Blizzard - but I could do it better!  Okay, maybe not…but I still think I could make improvements, even if ever so slight.  World of Warcraft is no doubt a great success and has many great features.  Obviously, we’ve all played it at one [...]

Every single time a new, big IP based MMO gets announced or gets near to completion, everyone starts asking the same question.  Is this going to be the one that kills WoW?  Usually it’s accompanied by that standard image of a gravestone with World of Warcraft plastered on it.
 
I don’t understand why so many people [...]

Playing a twink in the battlegrounds of World of Warcraft is a ton of fun!  That’s the upside, the downside is it costs a ton of gold to do it!  Even the cheap twink builds I’ve laid out for you here can be out of reach for all but the most hardcore players.  Let’s face [...]

Hello World!
 
New to the site? So am I! As GameZig’s newest writer, I’m pretty excited to get started. Veteran readers, help me acclimate if you’d be so kind.
 
A little about me…
As a gamer, I usually enjoy plenty of different kinds of games. Having just come out of a stretch of overtime at work, all I’ve [...]

Jordan Weisman, the founder of FASA Corporation and creator of the MechWarrior franchise has reacquired the license for MechWarrior back from Microsoft along with a few other properties previously in the FASA catalog.  He has taken his newly reacquired franchises back and launched a new game company to boot, Smith and Tinker.  While he hasn’t made [...]

With all the rush to find out more info about the KOTOR announcement I missed that the World of Warcraft: WotLK closed beta has begun - bringing the game out of the Alpha stage and one big step closer to release. I have entered to participate in the Beta but haven’t got that email yet, [...]

In a Portfolio.com interview this week at E3, John Riccitiello (the CEO of Electronic Arts) confirmed that the secret project in the works is indead Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic Online in partnership with LucasArts.
 
During the interview, N. Evan Van Zelfden asked point blank if the top secret project at BioWare’s Austin based [...]

Along with all the new content in the Wrath of the Lich King update, Blizzard will be releasing a new feature called the Achievement System.  Basically, it’s a list of things a player can do to gain titles and rewards.  Mostly through things they are already doing, like PVP, exploring the game world or progressing [...]

While doing my usual browsing around today I found a cool little video some beta tester leaked out over YouTube.com showing the Storm Peaks in the upcoming Wrath of the Lich King expansion for World of Warcraft.
 
Toward the end of the video, stay tuned for a sneak peak at what appears to be the city [...]

This your first time twinking? Maybe you are getting bored with high level raids in World of Warcraft and looking for something else to do while waiting for WotLK? Maybe you are tired of getting owned in BG?s and want some payback? Hell maybe this isn’t your first time and you are like me, a [...]

You see the ads for these two game economy wreckers all the time - power leveling and gold farming.  Hell you probably see one right now - wink wink.
 
World of Warcraft is a good example of how powerleveling and gold farming damage a games economy.  Now don’t get me wrong, farming in a game for [...]

When I first saw the trailers and game play footage of Diablo 3, I must say I was impressed.  Finally things in the game looked the way I thought they should have.  I was especially impressed with the end boss characters being much larger, looking more like you think a boss should look.  Mean.
 
But there [...]

In the next big patch (I beleive scheduled for next week?) is going to introduce apprentice mounts for players now at level 30.  To train for the ability to ride the new mounts will be 35 gold giving the lower level players a cheap boost to speed.  Every 10 levels or so usually has a [...]

In my ever growing quest to see some changes take place in our fast-becoming stale MMORPG template I’m going to publish more and more ideas. Out of the box thinking is what it will take to spice up upcoming titles and give them something different from the World of Warcraft mold so many games seem to be [...]

Major console systems like the Nintendo Wii, the Sony Playstation platform and Microsoft’s X-Box 360 all seemed to be suffering from the same affliction that has hit our beloved MMORPG genre of PC games - no or low risk game design.  Games like the Grand Theft Auto series are to the console as games like [...]

As the title of the post makes obvious, this was a very slow gaming weekend.  I messed around a bit in Call of Duty 4, working toward getting my gold AK-47 (I have no idea why I want one) and spent an hour or so in World of Warcraft leveling up my mage to level [...]

Oh the great debates we could have!  I hear people complaining in World of Warcraft battlegrounds all the time when a twink kills them.  They complain because he is uber powerful with all that extra gear!  Being that I’m usually playing a twink myself the complaints go in one ear and out the other without [...]

Warhammer Online is definitely garnering more and more of my attention lately with the let down of Age of Conan and the repetition of World of Warcraft making me look for new horizons.  Yesterday afternoon I was reading some Ten Ton Hammer interviews with WAR developer Mark Jacobs about the way crafting will work in [...]

I just finished reading a post from Syp over at Waaagh about his predictions on how Warhammer Online will fair in the MMO market and what he thinks are the keys to getting it there.  Syp lists 10 points that he believes will influence the outcome of WAR’s fate down the road, starting with number one, [...]

Well, that feels like a waste of $90.  I have this fancy box, this cool leather map and a game account I’m no longer going to play - at least not in the near future.  Age of Conan for me was a fun break away from the normal MMORPG in it’s unique style of combat [...]

Getting back to the MMORPG Cookie Cutter topic, to keep MMORPG’s from getting stale and give developers a fresh perspective on things gamers want, I started thinking about some interesting ways to bone up on features in new and even some current MMORPG titles.  Now, these aren’t necessarily a major overhaul on the whole MMORPG [...]

 
Some cool new features coming along with the next expansion to World of Warcraft “Wrath of the Lich King”, no doubt aimed at fending off serious competition from Age of Conan.  For example, some of the new quest mechanices they are implementing in the new expansion offer mount based combat.  If you remember in the [...]

There is never an end to the constant acquisition of gear! This is one of my posts on the downfalls of what had been one of my favorite games. It really is difficult for me to pick at WoW to much because I do still have a love for it, although that last few months [...]

Don’t get me wrong, World of Warcraft is a very fun and well written game.  But as with any game, there are issues that could be corrected.  One of these with no easy correction is the ganking of lower level characters by higher level enemy characters in PVP servers.  Most will say that if you join a PVP [...]

I’ve been playing games online since before the internet was a household term.  Guess that kind of ‘dates’ me a bit, but just want to give you an idea of the spectrum of games I’ve played.  I started out with text or ASCII based games on local bulletin boards running on an 300 baud modem.  [...]