Whew…made it relatively unscathed from my yearly jaunt into Christmas shopping madness. For those who are in Ottawa, I officially hate Merivale Rd. I would love to know the exact moment in time in the last 10 years when that street officially became a parking lot.

I’m going to be putting in my annual year review in early this year. The plan is to look at what I wanted to do last year, compare it to what I actually did and then project into next year. So, what was the plan last year…well, take a look at it here. I’ll go get a coffee whilst you have a good read and laugh at my many failures…heh.

The Goals of 2007

So overall, I thought 2006 was a pretty dry year for MMOs…and yeah, I guess it was with the only new MMO to release was LOTRO. Great game, great release but it did not stick with me unfortunately. Mind you, I probably will be revisiting it in the future. I kind of had two resolutions for myself: one covered the site itself, and the other for gaming in general. For gaming I said this:

So, my gaming resolution is to find one MMO and stick to it until I get max level. I?ve only got to max level in WoW?and thats really not a true MMO accomplishment. I do want this game to replace WoW so I?m hoping that one of the games on the list will be one to do it.

…fail. Didn’t get there for one single MMO in 2007. Let’s see…I’ve played Vanguard, LOTRO, EQ2, Eve Online, and WoW (-ish), and more recently Tabula Rasa. TR doesn’t count, but for the others, I wasn’t able to get to max level in any other them…but I sort of know why.

For the site I said this:

For the coming year, I?m going to put more solid content up. I?ve been mixing it up with link blogging and commentary and as I grow I want to try to get rid of the link blogging and put more commentary, editorials and reviews up. This will involve more work, but hey, I like doing this so it?s something I look forward to.

For this, I’m going to give myself a passing grade. I think I really beefed up the content of the site compared to last year…although there is always room for improvement. I have still have some style and approach tweaking that I think I need to do. “The voice” that I want to write in just isn’t there yet. You’ve probably noticed if you’ve been reading for a while that I’ve been experimenting in various deliveries…you know, angst, calm, anger, grandpa-ish, moody….all over the place really. Hmmmm…going to keep trying things out and see what happens. Most readers so far seem to like the rants…but honestly, I’ve only got so many of those in me per year, and some fall flat on their ass.

The final part of 2007 has been a bit rough for blogging. What I want to do, like I’ve said before, is give a unique and honest voice in the big forest of MMO bloggers. I just say what’s on my mind, put it out there, and see what the reaction is. Right or wrong, doesn’t matter…at least I said what I needed to say without having to worry about “other factors”. But for the last 3-4 months of 2007, news that I really care about has been hard to come by. I don’t know if it’s because the MMO industry is getting wise that we’re watching or that it was just naturally dry for that part of the year…but man, was it ever tough stringing a sentence together. I’m almost positive that 2008 will not have that problem given what’s coming down the road.

Down the Road

Speaking of “coming down the road”, it’s funny to read this a year later:

Going forward in 2007 for MMOs, we?ve got an exciting year ahead of us. All of the blogs I frequent, the podcasts, we?re all going to have a very good year in 2007?if everything works according to plan. We?ve got some big hitters coming out:

* Vanguard (Q1 2007)
* Age of Conan (Q2 2007)
* Warhammer Online (Q4 2007)
* Lord of the Rings Online (Q2 2007)
* Gods and Heroes (Q1 2007)
* WoW: Burning Crusade (Q1 2007)

Ouch…ouch…ouch. On that list, only two really made it in 2007. Here’s how that list turned out:
- Vanguard: We’ve covered this to death, we all know what happened
- Age of Conan: delayed ’till 2008
- Warhammer: Delayed ’till 2008
- LOTRO: great launch. Some issues with mid to end game…but otherwise a solid title
- G&H: canceled with a really interesting financial story behind it
- WOW: BC- big expansion, big hit…more of the same from Blizzard.

What’s “the list” look like for 2008? Here it is:
- Warhammer
- Age of Conan
- Agency
- Fallen Earth
- Huxley
- Stargate Worlds
- Spellborn
- Pirates of the Burning Sea

…and yeah, I know I’m missing some, so let know if there are others you think we should revisit for next year.

SUWT

This one, for me, was the surprise of 2007. I really did not want or expect to get into podcasting on a regular basis…but things like The Collective and SUWT do not fall on your lap every day. SUWT was a concept that a lot of people helped out with. Brent had the original idea because, what he covered on his podcast was the news however, he did not cover anything that was happening in the blogoshpere. For him, this was an important area of the MMO story that was not being communicated. I agreed…then not knowing that he was cleverly setting up a trap in that particular Skype conversation (…I kid. Brent would never knowingly set up a trap….ahem). When I asked him who he had in mind (…knowing full well the answer…), I really had to give it some serious thought because I know how much time Brent puts into his shows and, really, did I have that time? Answer was yes…yes I did. So, “a show” was born. We had a concept ready to go. One thing I did say to him though…that I refuse just to be a lone voice in the wilderness on this one. After doing two podcast reviews on my own, I found it quite awkward to talk to myself. I wanted a co-host and I wanted to bring new bloggers on as guests hosts…that way I wouldn’t sound insane just talking to myself. He said, “awesome” (…or he might have sneezed, I couldn’t tell..).

So we started thinking of co-hosts and one person immediately came to mind….Cuppy. So, from there, Cuppy and I just went with it. We got along really great. She was awesome and brought an element to the show that I simply could not bring. She was also very in tune with the community, which was, and still is, her strength. She was also the one who got the name of our show from Scott Hartsman. Of course, on the third episode, Cuppy got a job at Areae as the Community Manager and is still there bringing her unique community talents to that company. After Cuppy left, I got another co-host in Adele. She also brought a unique voice to the show and did a great job. She also left because she just needed to step away from the computer for a while. She’s back in the game now (…literally and figuratively…) and continues to participate in the blogosphere. So now I’m co-host…less. Ahem. Except now, of course I have given out the “occasional co-host” title to John who has been on more times than anyone….potshot is a close second. Of course, John isn’t as sexy as Adele or Cuppy, and still refuses to wear any of the many dresses in his wardrobe during recordings.

…wow…this is getting long

So for the blog, I’m still tooling for the “voice”…for SUWT, I think we’ve got the voice and spirit of the show absolutely nailed. Why is that? It’s because of every guest that I’ve had on that show. I was going to give a big list of everyone who has been on, but…heh…it’s a big list. I just wanted to thank each and every one of you have have been on the show. You’ve all made the show what it is today by just bringing the your thoughts to the airwaves. I really, really can’t thank you guys enough for the discussions and, more importantly, the laughs. Also, to the MMO blogging community. This really is your show. I don’t make the content up, you guys do and I’m amazed on the amount of stuff I have to choose from every couple of weeks. Before each recording, I always tell myself, “there is no way I have enough for the show”..and then I look at my tagged list of articles only to find 150-200 to choose from.

Whew…so that’s it for this year I guess. More articles to come from this site for 2008. More SUWT shows to look forward to. More games to look forward to.

I want to wish all of you a Merry Christmas. Enjoy your families. Enjoy your gaming. We’ll see you all next year.

D out.

Posted in Editorial
14 Comments Posted by Darren