Site News

General news about happenings at MassMOG.com and the MassMOG Network

Let's seal up this vault, eh?

Submitted by Hoza on May 17, 2020 - 12:01am

 Hello and thank you for visiting!

As you can see if you're an actual person and not a spammer twit, this place hasn't been updated in a LONG while.  I've neglected it wholly.. and the spammers are the main ones who figured that out.

So, let's just shut this place down, shall we?  Yes. Yes, we shall.

I'm going to just say a quick "thank you" to everyone who supported the site as it was for a long while during the early heyday of massively multiplayer online (role playing) games.  Back when Everquest, Asheron's Call and Ultima Online were the main players (yeah, there were TONS of text MUDs and other multiplayer games out at the time, but I was honestly not drawn in by them... for me it was Asheron's Call that done pulled me in.)

The site's been around for a long while, but I just need to shut the door to the hacking and spamming traffic so I can focus on other stuff.  If I revive this site, it needs to be re-built, so the best thing to do with this version is to just lock it up.  I'm going to shut it down as "live" site and archive it into old-school flat files, so bye-bye spammers!  Won't be anything for you to screw around with anymore. Ha!  I... win?


Anyway, thanks again for hopping in.   I'm going to put all the articles I wrote into a giant stream of words, simply sorted by date posted, starting with this post and going back to the beginning (of this version, anyway.  There were others before it, but not sure if their posts made it in here or not... it was a long while ago, Sonny. Get off my lawn! *ahem*... sorry.)

Follow this giant link to unlock the key to archival adventures and see what the heck I was writing about, oh-so-many years ago...

Thank you again for visiting and maybe stop by down the road. Maybe we'll do something interesting someday.

Cheers,

Hoza

 

 

The Final Portal Storm of Asheron's Call

Submitted by Hoza on February 2, 2017 - 9:53pm

2/2/2017 Update:
Well.. Asheron's Call is dead as of a couple days ago. RIP AC1.

I'm pretty saddened by that notion, it turns out. I hadn't played in the past couple years, but I'll admit I never thought the game would actually die off, especially given some hope that Turbine/WB would release private server options and I wondered if some form of open sourcing would happen someday... just seemed like the thing would somehow live on forever.

AC holds a special place in this genre for me, but not just due to it being one of the first three MMORPG's in the world, but because it was really great. I still haven't played any game quite like it in many ways and there's something about a community that sticks around for something that long (17 years), that makes it special in ways the game itself can't really measure against.

I find it strange that I'm sitting here feeling somewhat like AC dying off is also a sort of death for this site. I started MassMOG in 2000 -- Creation Date: 23-feb-2000, to be exact -- spawned largely due to the excitement and novelty of the burgeoning gaming genre of MMORPGs (I didn't like the acronym and tried to make my own in "MassMOG".. which obviously never really caught on. Heh.) I had played in the AC1 beta and was really excited about the genre as a whole and the potential of persistent worlds with thousands of players.

Of course, over all these years, the genre turned into a mess in many ways, mostly driven by the typical onslaught of copycats and rushed-out money generators. There have been many gems, of course, but the original excitement faded for me overall in the recent decade, where it started looking like the notion of the MMO was being relegated to more of a gimmick. Some great games are still flying high on the concept though, so I guess my melancholy over AC1 is getting the better of me at the moment.

System Upgrades Afoot

Submitted by Hoza on March 1, 2011 - 6:10pm

 It's been quiet around here lately, as we've been preparing some big changes to both the hardware and software behind MassMOG.com.  I've been swamped with all the work that needs to be done, so posting has been suffering horribly.

Soon, we'll get back up and posting regularly again --- maybe with some new "faces" around here, too!

(Oh, that reminds me:  you want to write for us?  Apply here for a currently-volunteer position -- volunteer until you show you're committed and then we'll see about appropriate compensation:  Send us info about you and links to writing samples.)

New Network-wide Login System Activated

Submitted by Hoza on March 4, 2010 - 8:09am

I've enabled a "single sign-on" system that allows for all the sites on the "MassMOG Network" of sites to share user login information.  That means you can log in to one of the sites on the network, and you'll be logged in to all the rest of the sites.  Now, you might be wondering what "all the sites" means when you're just at MassMOG.com now, eh?  Well... that's where things get busy for me.

Soon, I'll be unveiling what I hope to be some good content sites focused on "FAQ"-type information about massively multiplayer online games.  For now, these links won't look any different, but I'm planning on rolling out MMOFAQ.com and WoWFAQ.com, among others if I can get the time (or help) to post enough content to justify them.

I'll post more when I officially launch these sites, but for now, just keep in mind that there is more coming!

Thanks a ton for visiting!  Please come back soon... with friends. :)

You might need to re-enter the Faunasphere giveaway

Submitted by Hoza on July 30, 2009 - 4:18pm

Sorry for the hassle, but if you entered the Faunasphere beta giveaway before today (July 30th) at 4pm MST, and were NOT logged in with a MassMOG.com account, your entry was not likely saved properly.  Gah!  Again, sorry about that.  Just run over and fill 'er out again and you're golden.

However, this does point out the simple lesson to be learned here:  membership has its privelages, eh?  :P  (Even if they're unintentional.. I did not do this on purpose just to weed out the slackers who don't want to join the MassMOG.com bus.)

Once more, I'm sorry about any inconvenience on this one.

 

"Themes, they are a-changin'"

Submitted by Hoza on July 28, 2009 - 9:53pm

Here I go again with site theme changes. I wasn't very happy with the last one (well, I had intended to fix it up and make the tweaks so I liked it, but that never happened.) So, now I have a new one that still needs tweaks that I may not do. Yay!

Hope it's better to those of you visiting regularly -- to the new blood, I hope you like it as it is! I'll be doing some more tweaks soon, but first, I need to write up an article or two about stuff that's been burning holes in my Inbox from developers.

Thanks for visiting and please keep coming back!

Cheers,
[Paul] Hoza

Another theme "adjustment"

Submitted by Hoza on January 12, 2009 - 3:41am

"Hurray!", I'm sure you're saying. Yet another adjustment to the site theme has just occurred. Many of you watched it happen in front of your eyes, but since I'm not inclined to do things the "pro" way, I didn't bother to take the site down while tweaking. This is all live, baby!

(ugh.. I did indeed say "baby".. shame and all that ensues.)

So, I still think the text is way too big (as of this moment) and it's pretty stark, but I like where this might be heading compared to the last one. I would really rather go with a completely different theme, but hey, I'm not a theme designer and I don't have time to mess with this too much. The older green one was just bugging me. I need to round off some of these sharp edges or this one will start to bug me too.

Anyway, thanks for the visit! I'll get on to posting some news soon.

Cheers,
Hoza

Site maintenance

Submitted by Hoza on May 4, 2006 - 2:42pm

[update: Mostly upgraded, but still a few straggling bugs to squash. Thanks for any patience you've mustered, if you were around for the worst of the mess. And yes, I'm going to ditch this theme soon and get something looking much better... time, time, time. Thanks for visiting.]

more blah after jump...  (don't worry, it's all just as useless to read.) 

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