aol-im-goodbyeIssue 113: I am going to rant a bit in the intro; if you don’t want to see the horrible things I think about AOL, you can probably skip this paragraph. If you haven’t heard by now, AOL has shut down three of my favorite gaming blog sites: Joystiq, Massively and WoW Insider. Some troglodyte in the upper ranks of AOL has made the ignorant decision to further ostracize AOL and shutdown these sites and fire 150 people; and ultimately left millions of faithful readers reeling in disbelief. There was nerd rage the likes of which the world had never seen. The beautiful irony is that the brilliant writers that were unfairly dismissed have a plan to persevere and we will soon see new weblogs pop up; AOL on the other hand will die a miserable and deserved death (finally). Make sure you take a moment to thank all the extraordinary writers for Joystiq, Massively and WoW Insider!

**Phew** I’m glad that’s out of my system. So let’s get back to talking about the games we all love. The former Massively and WoW Insider folks are already working on making a comeback. The first bit of new content for the current WoW expansion has been unlocked, unexpected news from Sony and more news from all of the great and valuable MMO news sources out there that deserve better than they often get from the corporate ass-hats that leer over them.

Details on Blackrock Foundry

Posted 2.2.15 – The newest raid instance for the current World of Warcraft expansion has opened up: Blackrock Foundry. MMO-Champion has a great breakdown of all that it has to offer from encounters, tier previews and loot tables. Unfortunately I am no where near ready to venture into BRF as I haven’t even tried Highmaul yet. I hope to get in there soon though.
MMO-Champion post

ICYMI: Sony Sells SOE!

Posted 2.2.15 – I don’t think anyone saw this coming! I certainly wasn’t expecting to see this headline when I started perusing headlines Monday morning. Sony has sold off its department that manufactures Playstation games to independent investment firm Columbus Nova. The new name is now called Daybreak Game Company and since its completely independent from Sony they can now manufacture titles across all the consoles. I’m kind of hoping they go back and release some Playstation only games for other platforms, such as The Last of Us!
arstechnica post

New Site: Blizzard Watch!

Posted 2.3.15 – AOHell shutdown Massively, WoW Insider and Joystiq at 5:00pm EST on February 3rd and at approximately the same time the talented folks (that were wrongfully dismissed) at WoW Insider launched a fund raising campaign for Blizzard Watch. In less than 12 hours they had all the funding they needed (and some) to officially launch Blizzard Watch, the successor to WoW Insider. I am very excited for these folks and I’m happy to be reading their content again. If you haven’t checked out the new Blizzard news site, I suggest you go and bookmark it now!
Blizzard Watch site | BW Welcome Post

MassivelyOP Kickstarter

Posted 2.6.15 – Just like the WoW Insider folks, the former Massively writers have begun their campaign to launch the Massively successor called Massively OP (OP means OverPowered … its a gamer thing). They have already raised over $16k (at the time that I am writing this). They hope to hit 50k by the end of the month-ish. They could use your backing to help bring back our MMO news site.
MassivelyOP Kickstarter | MassivelyOP site

2014 D.I.C.E. Awards

Posted 2.6.15 – The 18th annual D.I.C.E. Awards was held recently and the two big winners are probably not a big surprise to most people. Shadow of Mordor was nominated for 9 awards and it won 8 of them, including Adventure Game of the Year and Dragon Age: Inquisition won Game of the Year. Another interesting thing to note is that Blizzard’s Hearthstone also took a couple of awards. I never would have guessed that game became as popular as it did and as fast as it did.
polygon article
If you are interested in receiving these posts in an e-mail please click here to subscribe.