Theoretical MMO Embedded Reporter

[Joel]

One of the orgs I work with is considering hiring a part-time (or maybe full-time) reporter just to focus on goings on inside WoW and Second Life. There's been limited experience with this sort of thing on Second Life (Wagner James Au's stuff, mostly) but I'm curious if anyone has any thoughts on the sorts of approaches a reporter could take on this beat, especially in something like WoW where a notable event might occur on any one of dozens of servers.

[Lum]

There has been considerably more than "limited experience" with writing about the goings-on of online worlds. (I seem to recall spending three or so years writing about it, personally.) However generally they don't have the incredibly pretentious "embedded reporter" malarkey, but simply write about interesting goings-on within a particular game.

WoW Insider does a fairly mainstream job of covering World of Warcraft, including some in-game notable events such as server firsts: http://www.wowinsider.com/ AFK Gamer does much the same from a "snarky goings on in my own guild" perspective: http://www.afkgamer.com/

[stusser]

Everybody that thinks this is a stupid idea, reply with the word "STD" used in dialogue you might have with a gas station attendent or mechanic. You are a hot but dumb blonde named Alice.

Everybody that thinks this is a great idea, reply with the word "corndog" used in dialogue you might have with your mom's new boyfriend. Also, you are a twelve year old boy named Carter with ADHD. You may or may not be gay.

Mine:

"Paulie, I can't believe you're charging me $300 to fix the oil handler sprocket. Can't you just put in a liter of that new synthetic STD? I hear it works wonders," said Alice with a vacant look.

[Lum]

"Hi, Paul! Who are you? Hi! I'm Carter! What's on TV? I had a corndog at the fair last night! Is your name Paul! Hi! I'm not looking at your butt! I'm Carter! I like corndogs. Hi! Are you sleeping with my mom? My nose itches."

(Note, I don't think it's a good idea, I just wanted to lower to the challenge.)

[Rollory]

Eve Online has a dead-tree quarterly magazine, paid for by players subscribing to it and player organizations paying for ad space in it. The content is nothing but Eve-focused material.

Haven't ever gotten an issue myself, so I can't say more than that. Except maybe that the OP's "orgs" need to do more research on what is actually going on before patting themselves on the back for this wonderful new idea they've had, and putting effort and energy into a service that is already provided by people who know what they are doing and what they are talking about.

[Udarnik]

The first people that I've known to do this are Wired magazine (http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/6.05/ultima.html?topic=&topic_set=) in a 1998 article on Ultima Online.

They crowded around (the reporter) DarkStarr - "Who's the newcomer? It's a female!" - and made crude jokes. To entertain DarkStarr, they killed a wandering healer, ate some of the victim's body parts, and prayed together over the corpse, offering it as a sacrifice to the evil Guardian. ... At one point, things turned really ugly. In a display of brute force, Bubba turned himself into a gorilla and threatened to sodomize Xavori with a thigh bone taken from one of the victims. Unintimidated, Xavori cast a blazing firewall at Bubba - but because of server lag (or perhaps bad aim) it hit DarkStarr instead, killing her instantly.
The hosts gathered around, staring down at the corpse in momentary dismay. One of them cried out, "You've killed the reporter from Wired, you moron!"

[Charlatan]

Since Second Life is no STD MMORPG, I don't think it would work.

WoW, however, is no dog - heck, it's no corndog! So maybe, just maybe...

[Joel]

There has been considerably more than "limited experience" with writing about the goings-on of online worlds. (I seem to recall spending three or so years writing about it, personally.) However generally they don't have the incredibly pretentious "embedded reporter" malarkey, but simply write about interesting goings-on within a particular game.

WoW Insider does a fairly mainstream job of covering World of Warcraft, including some in-game notable events such as server firsts: http://www.wowinsider.com/ AFK Gamer does much the same from a "snarky goings on in my own guild" perspective: http://www.afkgamer.com/

My mistake. I meant limited experience in mainstream mags or non-gaming oriented publications. I read your site, too, so I don't know what I was thinking phrasing it that way.

[Troy S Goodfellow]

I meant limited experience in mainstream mags or non-gaming oriented publications.

Is there an angle interesting enough to hold the attention of the readers of non-enthusiast press?

Troy

[Lum]

You could probably get a Second Life escort review column in Maxim.

[Mark Asher]

Is there an angle interesting enough to hold the attention of the readers of non-enthusiast press?

Troy

I'm not even sure there's enough to hold the interest of the enthusiasts. The game world doesn't really change, so the reporting would just be about...what? Guild bullshit?

[JM]

EVE also has a reporter crew who work for some site, and a guy doing his "0.0 experiment" and blogging about it. Neither of them were that good, though.

I was tempted to start a proper EVE Newscorp but realised that it would take far too much time.

[Flowers]

So, umm. I think it's broke. I was driving, and then it kinda conked out on me. Could you put some STD in it, like Tom Petty says to do on the tv?