Noah’s Page

Location
Denver

Current Gaming Platforms
PC, Xbox 360, PS3, 3DS

Current MMOs

The Secret World

  • Server: Daemon
  • Main Character: McJudge, a Templar Warlock
  • Cabal: Channel Massive

World of Warcraft

  • Server: Arthas
  • Main Character: Cuddlmonstrr, a Horde Brewmaster Monk
  • Guild: Channel Massive

Favorite MMOs

  • World of Warcraft
  • City of Heroes
  • Age of Conan

Noah’s Handles on Xbox 360 and PS3 PSN

Akindor

On Steam

ThisIsNoah

3DS Friend Code

2793 0933 2715

Other Favorite Games

  • Xbox 360
    • Mass Effect (series)
    • Mirror’s Edge
    • Enslaved
    • Bayonetta
    • Dante’s Inferno
    • Resident Evil 5
    • Split Second
    • Left 4 Dead
    • Dead Space
    • Prince of Persia (2008)
    • Braid
    • Stacking
    • Limbo
    • DJ Hero
    • Rock Band
    • Uno and Uno Rush
  • PS3
    • Uncharted (series)
    • Journey
    • Flower
    • Soundshapes
  • Wii
    • Super Mario Galaxy
    • de Blob
    • A Boy and His Blob
    • Final Fantasy: Crystal Chronicles: My Life as a Darklord
    • House of the Dead: Overkill
    • ArtStlye: Orbient
    • BoomBlox
  • DS & 3DS
    • Fire Emblem: Awakening
    • Zero Escape (series)
    • Professor Layton (series)
    • Phoenix Wright (series)
    • Henry Hatsworth
    • Final Fantasy IV (3D remake)
    • Space Invaders Extreme
    • New Super Mario Bros
    • Tetris DS
  • PC
    • League of Legends
    • Portal (series)
    • Warcraft III and its mods, particularly DotA and Tides of Blood
    • Starcraft
    • Obsidian
    • Torin’s Quest
    • Gabriel Knight (series)
    • King’s Quest (series)
  • PlayStation 2
    • Amplitude
    • Demon Stone
    • Bully
    • Ico
    • God of War
    • SSX (Series)
  • Nintendo 64
    • The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask
    • Xena: Warrior Princess
    • Banjo Kazooie
    • Mario Kart 64
    • Super Smash Bros Melee
    • Blast Corps
    • Goldeneye 64
  • Any System They Come Out On
    • Burnout (series)
    • Castlevania (series)
    • Final Fantasy (numbered sequels)
    • Katamari Damacy (series)
    • Resident Evil (series)
    • SoulCalibur (series)

Bio
You may notice I’m not as well-versed in MMOs as Jason and Mark, who have decades more experience than I in the genre, but I do like a good MMO and have played a number of them. My first experience was in the original EverQuest back in 2001: I tried making a female character just to see if the myth of better treatment as a female was true. I confirmed it was and then quickly switched to playing a much less attractive Iksar named Jebbo Sunflower (he was pretty on the inside), but got very bored with the game within just a couple sessions.

It wasn’t until Mark began singing the praises of the upcoming City of Heroes back in 2004 that I got into MMOs again. I was very reluctant to even try it, but I did eventually and had many a kickass time playing with Mark, Jason and Jim, and we even had some LAN party setups now and then to play together in the same room. I was a kickass, gun-totin’ Texan Cheerleader named Dinah Mite, I think on the Pinnacle server, at that time. We also made a supergroup that consisted of Robert Palmer (Jim) and three of his black mini-dress dancers (Mark, Jason and I– Mark was the one named, uh, Cabalist, I was just “Cheri”). After a couple years, though, we moved on: Mark and Jason into World of Warcraft and Jim and I into other endeavors altogether. Since I was running a Nintendo fansite (Nintendojo) and for a brief while a multi-platform gaming site (Unlimited Lives), I focused back on consoles.

Then before Burning Crusade came out, Mark started his sly salesmanship of WoW to me yet again. He’d tried a couple times before, but when I saw the overwhelming complexity of his overloaded interface (more by his design than Blizzard’s), I wasn’t interested. Pretty game, great music, but too much micromanagement: that was my internal assessment. Yet Mark had previously and successfully gotten me into my first RTSs– Starcraft and Warcraft III in the preceding years, both of which I never would have played without his cajoling– and the idea of roleplaying a Blood Elf, with his and Jason’s expert assistance, sold me on it. I happily leveled up a Blood Elf Warlock to his upper 20s (Kordin on Arthas server), and we discussed that through the first of Channel Massive’s episodes, but all of us knew we’d drop WoW like nothing when Age of Conan came out, an MMO I needed no one else’s encouragement to get excited about.

While Mark and Jason gave me a hard time of getting a laptop with Vista installed on it, my system was the stablest of all of ours to play AoC on. I leveled up a Bear Shaman I loved to play as (Gobault on Tyrrany), but with Mark’s, Jason’s and Jim’s frequent game crashes, they all quit, and I didn’t want to play without them, so I did, too. I vowed I wouldn’t get into another dumb MMO for only 2 months’ time until years had passed, and the relentlessly annoying promotion of Warhammer Online by that English guy and the fact that Lich King was made for l33t players ensured I wouldn’t go there again. I figured I’d wait until Marvel Universe– scratch that– Champions Online came out.

Yet somehow Mark talked me into Warhammer! If only Mark got a commission for the games he has sold me. I never thought I’d fall in love with playing a bitchy Witch Elf named Synetta on the Dark Crag server, but she was badass. My favorite part of Warhammer was the PvP scenarios– low penalty and risk, kickass FPS-style team objectives. The Public Quests were cool, too, but my console gamer roots made me love the scenarios more. Amazingly, Mark continued to play his Dark Elf Disciple of Khaine while also getting into Wrath of the Lich King at the same time, but then after a break wherein Mark’s second child was born, we realized the game had been retrofitted to the point where both our characters totally sucked in Scenarios, and so our love was lost. We decided it was time to return to Hyboria, a year after a multitude of bug fixes had been enacted.

Unfortunately, our return to AoC was brief. I played an Aquilonian Dark Templar named Solanar, and was part of our listeners’ awesome Creeping Darkness guild, in which Blameful Gecko and OpenEdge (and his family) kicked ass and surpassed me. I then kind of fell out of MMOs, while Mark dived into Champions Online and Star Trek Online.

Years later, when the landscape and business models of MMOs had changed significantly, I proposed to Mark that we refocus Channel Massive on MMOs only, but keeping our commitments to brief (yet dense!) two-month engagements where we asked listeners to join us. We wouldn’t stay long enough in a game to get burned out and would keep things fresh for us– and listeners– by changing our main game every eight weeks. And since so many AAA, western-developed MMOs were going subscription free, if not free to play, there seemed to be a huge selection of great games to return to or give a solid try.

And now I’m inexplicably a true fan of MMOs, starting with no less than World of Warcraft! How things– and people– have changed.


 
 
 
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