Howdy folks. Welcome to a new MMORPG-oriented blog (yes, another one!) that you’ll hopefully find to your taste and interests. While for the time being I’ll be predominantly discussing Warhammer Online and an overarching view of the MMO marketplace, reroller itself will eventually support a variety of different currently and future MMORPGs, including World of Warcraft, Age of Conan, and (hopefully!) Guild Wars 2.
While I realize the blog looks pretty plain right now, I just haven’t finished the template for it yet. A new design should be up soon, but in the meantime, I figured I’d start writing first and worry about prettying it up later. :)
What is reroller?
Without getting into too much detail, reroller is a hybrid social network and collaborative web application / organizational tool for MMORPG players, be they casual gamers, hardcore raiders, or guild/clan leaders. The site is currently under development, and scheduled to go into beta in early 2009. Interested in participating in the beta test? You can sign up here, and we’ll contact you as the beta starts.
reroller is being developed by the same team (err, that would be me) that brought you Protagonize, a collaborative creative fiction-writing site that launched in late 2007, and has gained a lot of popularity and won several design and community-related awards in the last year.
What’s the deal with this blog?
This blog is not only a precursor to the site to come, but also a podium for me to discuss and pick apart Warhammer Online, and vent about the state of MMORPGs today.
I read a good selection of different MMO-related blogs (Tobold’s, Keen & Graev, and Player vs. Developer to name a few — you can see a selection of the rest in our recommended reading list) on a regular basis and I keep feeling like I need to blurt something out every time I see a point I have a dissenting opinion about. Instead of posting comments (which I still do, from time to time), why not a blog?
To make a long story short, I already blog in a variety of different places, and I had been thinking about setting up something to rant about MMOs for a while. I figured, what better place than on the blog for the new site I’m developing? So, here we are.
I’ll be posting regularly, though probably not more than two to three times a week. Suggestions for posts are always welcome, but for the most part I’ll be writing about Warhammer Online and related goings-on in the MMO world.
About me
My name is Nick, I’m 30 years old, and I work in technology as a user experience developer for a consulting firm in Vancouver, BC, Canada. I also build web-based community sites via my personal consultancy in my spare time, focusing on collaboration and entertainment. I realize that not going totally anonymous — as many of the other gaming bloggers do — could cause me some grief down the road, but for various reasons, I think it’s probably the better way for me to go about it (as you’ll see below.)
A few things about me when it comes to MMORPGs:
- I consider myself a casual gamer, be it in MMORPGs (which is most of what I play on the PC) or console games (I play a decent amount of Xbox 360 games, too.) I don’t participate in hardcore raiding guilds, but I like to raid casually, when I have time. I lead a pretty busy life, between work, my side projects, and my wife-to-be, so I have to optimize where I spend my gaming time.
- I’ve been a gamer for a long time; it’s been probably something like 25 years now. I’ve been playing MMOs for ages too (dating back to the beta for Ultima Online), and prior to that online ladder-style TCGs like Chron X and Sanctum, going all the way back to old-school BBS door games. Yeah, just looking those up made me feel old. Sigh.
- I’m definitely a PvPer, though I don’t play on full-on PVP servers. I’ve always enjoyed PvP, and played DAOC for years before switching to WOW, Age of Conan, and now WAR. I enjoy RvR just as much.
- I currently play Warhammer Online in a small-ish guild on the Skull Throne server (Order side.) As of this writing, my highest character is a Tier 4 Warrior Priest (not quite 40 yet), and I have a couple of alts (White Lion and Swordmaster) in Tier 3.
- I plan on rolling a Knight of the Blazing Sun alt (and likely a Black Guard, too) as soon as the 1.06 patch comes out, just like everyone else I know in WAR. :)
- I am a chronic reroller. Hence the name of the site. I can never pick a main, though I usually end up stuck with something half-gimped because of my love for hybrid and DPS classes. WAR is the first time I’ve played a healer anywhere to a high-ish level. And even now, I’m considering more alts to play.
Full disclosure
As I know people hate finding things out after the fact, I’ll be clear about this right up-front: I have a day job, but I run Protagonize (and now reroller) as a business. While my blog posts here are going to be mostly op/ed style and very subjective pieces, this is still work for me. Hey, you can work and still have fun, right? That’s how I like to think of it, at least. Anyhow, just wanted to clarify that right away, in case you were curious. Hopefully now I won’t get mailbombed later. ;)
Now that I’ve gotten this first post out of the way, I’ll have to start planning for second one. Any ideas? Uhhhh… Hang on, I think I’ve got something. :)
