Why Create This Blog?

Why start a blog about gaming in general, and massively multiple online role playing games in particular? Yes, there are more important things I could write about, like the adventures of the first African-American president in U.S. history. But I've been there and done that already. I wrote a small political/current events blog for a couple of years back in 2003-2005. Searching the web looking for news to write about became something of a grind, so I stopped. I’ll let others with more inspired political views handle the weighty matters of the day.

My journey into MMORPGs began in 2005 when a co-worker convinced me to try a game called World of Warcraft. I started on a player vs. player (PvP) server and leveled a paladin up to the mid-30s before I got tired of getting ganked. But I still liked the game so I re-rolled a pally on a player vs. environment (PvE) server and made it to the pre-Burning Crusades level cap of 60. Then I was kicked out of the guild I had been in since level 17 because I couldn’t raid, leveling an alt was not fun, and the PvP and faction grinds became, well, a grind. So after playing for 9 months I cancelled my account. (And before you ask, I’m not going to re-activate my account so you can have my gear.)

After a month I began to get an itch to play another game. WoW was a great game to play from levels 1-60, but I really didn’t like the end game. I heard about another game called EverQuest II, signed up in June 2006, and haven’t looked back.

Just as I had the itch to keep playing MMOs, I’ve got an itch to blog again. I made the mistake of listening to gaming podcasts and became hooked. At first it was just the broadcasts/podcasts over at Online Gaming Radio. OGR has two excellent EQ2 broadcasts on Tuesday nights, EQ2's-day and the Jethal Silverwing Show, and I started going though the archives listening to the old shows. I also started reading one of the writers on Online Gaming Radio, Sister Julie Whitefeather, who now writes blog posts for Virgin Worlds and is the co-host of the podcast "No Prisoners, No Mercy". For those of you who may not know, Virgin Worlds is a web site chock-full of podcast goodness for anyone looking for podcasts about MMOs. After listening to a few of the podcasts, I realized I’d hit the mother lode. But the more I listened, the more I wanted to speak out about my own opinions. I didn’t want to just be a comments poster. I decided a long time ago that if I was going to start posting on other people’s sites and blogs that I was going to have a place where other people could comment on my thoughts. I don’t want to just comment on what other people say. Occasionally I would like to drive the discussion. So this blog was born.