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I was trolling through the forums at Arstechnica not too long ago, and saw someone chatting up his latest project: WowPlot. Immediately, that thread went into the well for future column ideas.

WoWPlot is a graphical combat log analyzer for World of Warcraft, in a similar vein to WoW Web Stats. According to the developer, "Its main focus lies in evaluating time-dependant combat performance in a very free-form fashion, which is in contrast to the mainly statistical approach of other tools such as Wow Web Stats." From a technical standpoint, you'll need OS X 10.5.x and, obviously, a Macintosh. As I stupidly found out the hard way, you'll also need combat logs from 2.4 or later. I know it sounds obvious, but early testing and subsequent error messages led to a face-palming, "no duh!" moment on my behalf -- it's been a while since I've raided, so I ended up having to beg some logs from a guildie.

Now, before I get too heavy into my discussion on this, this is early beta software. Rather than just e-mail the developer with my thoughts, I thought I'd kill two birds with one stone: I can make my deadline and maybe get him some more exposure and feedback if some of you try it out.

With Star Wars Galaxies, unbelievably, celebrating its fifth anniversary (and winner of the Spinal Tap, "Where are they now?" category, 2008) I was asked to reflect on my experiences in the beta program. Most likely, time healed a lot of wounds and I've probably got my new rose-colored glasses on, so forgive me I'm overly nostalgic. Like a lot of people, I'd applied to the beta program and would compulsively hit the refresh button on my webmail client whenever Kevin O'Hara (Q3PO) sent out the "we added more testers" e-mails. On February 18, 2003 (clearly, I keep too many e-mails to pull that one up) I got my acceptance letter and promptly ordered the CDs.

Read on for an account of my love/hate relationship with Star Wars Galaxies' Beta program.

MMOS X is a bi-weekly column dedicated solely to gaming on the Macintosh natively. "Running Boot Camp or Parallels" is not an option here. This column is for people who want to get the most out of their Mac gaming, as meager as it is.

Originally, this week's column was going to be a technical how-to, but a series of snafus -- not the least of which included me slapping my head and going, "You moron, combat logs changed after patch 2.4. That's why this new analyzer you are looking at is barfing on your Karazhan logs from February." However, my focus changed when, like many of the Faithful, I turned my attention to the West Monday to see what our Leader had to say.

Frankly, all I wanted Jobs to say was, "with iPhone 2.0, now you can sync iCal tasks to the iPhone." I didn't get that. Instead, I got a bunch of technical jargon that went over my head. Really, who did he think he was talking to, a bunch of developers or something? When a couple of game developers got up to show off their new iPhone apps, a light bulb went off for this week's late column.

Fair warning: this week's column is light on the MMO and heavy on the hardware.

A month or so ago, Psystar shocked the Mac world by announcing they were selling low-cost computers pre-installed with Apple's Leopard Operating System. This begat discussion of whether this marked a new chapter in the clone wars. Macworld's recent benchmarking placed the Psystar between the Mac Mini and the low-end iMac, which makes sense given that's where it falls price wise. However, Macworld is reporting the Psystar computer placed better than the iMac in Quake 4 tests.

Now, I'm not advocating you go out and buy one of these things. Even if the thin ice they are on legally with Apple is solid enough to avoid litigation, there's the not-so-minor detail that Apple could simply render the OS unusable via a software update. If you don't think Apple will do this, ask how people who unlocked their iPhones made out after that first software upgrade. Psystar is working on making updates available, but really, do you want to trust a 3rd party for your OS upgrades?

MMOS X is a bi-weekly column dedicated solely to gaming on the Macintosh natively. "Running Boot Camp or Parallels" is not an option here. This column is for people who want to get the most out of their Mac gaming, as meager as it is.

There aren't a lot of MMOs that fall into the "I've got a few minutes and want to goof around in" category. Second Life to me is one. Sure, we can argue the "Is SL an MMO argument" while we're taking a break from the "Which is better: Mac or PC?" argument. For me, SL is good for that hour I've got to kill because I got to my night class early, or I'm sitting in bed with my laptop and my RSS feeds are up to date. Really, some days I'll play anything to avoid a daily quest.

The gotcha is, when I got my laptop I had a hard time convincing my wife err myself that I needed to blow almost two grand on a laptop. I still don't have too much buyer's regret over my regular Macbook. Games aside, the three apps that do most of my heavy lifting are Twitteriffic, Mail, and Scrivener (these days, it seems like I write more than game). World of Warcraft runs OK on it, but, lordy, does Second Life crawl on it. I'm not sure which gets better FPS: Second Life running on a Macbook, or frozen molasses rolling uphill. Yeah, I know, the integrated video on the 'book isn't supported and that's what I get for running unsupported hardware and I shoud be using a Macbook Pro. Duly noted.

That said, an unscientific study conducted at my school's cafeteria and library, taken randomly on Mondays between 4 and 5 pm shows a heck of a lot more college kids sprung for the cheapo 'books. Second Life could be considered a good game for non-gamers in the way The Sims was considered a good game for people that hated Quake. So, lets take a good, hard look at what's involved with Second Life on Macbooks, what you can do, and what realities your going to face running SL on a non-Pro 'book.

In the header blurb to this column, I state that "Running Boot Camp or Parallels is not an option here." I stand by that still. I don't think that dual-booting or loading XP within a virtual desktop is the solution any of us want. Dual booting takes up valuable hard drive space that I could use to store large media files of consenting adults. Running Parallels throws another layer of processor overhead when I run XP within Parallels within OS X. Not to mention Parallels' DirectX support is poor. Note: I haven't tried VMWare's Fusion, which is the competitor to Parallels.

A week or so ago, our own Mike Schramm wrote up a little piece on TUAW about CrossOver Games. CrossOver Games lets you run some Windows games within an emulator. It's not a pure virtual environment like Parallels, so you don't have the overhead of running two OSs. When I read Mike's piece, my first thought was, "huh." My second thought was, "Huh, I wonder if there's a middle ground here somewhere." At the risk out sounding like I'm eating my own words, CrossOver might be enough of a compromise that doesn't involve buying a copy of Windows to game on a Mac.

As we reported yesterday, former EverQuest Lead Designer Travis McGeathy announced his departure from SOE. On a message board post he alluded to a "cross country trip." With former SOE employees taking cross country trips tending to end up at 38 Studios, Red Sox pitcher Curt Schilling's start-up, we reached out to the hurler himself for comment.

Curt confirmed to us via e-mail this morning that Travis will indeed be joining SOE alumni Steve Danuser, Ryan Shwayder, Billy Ahlswede, Aaron Carlson, Niraj Desai, Eric Theisz, and Michael Woods in their Maynard, MA offices. Jeez, Curt, wouldn't it just be easier to buy SOE at this point? Curt did not immediately respond to a follow-up on what exactly Travis will be doing.

MMOS X is a bi-weekly column dedicated solely to gaming on the Macintosh natively. "Running Boot Camp or Parallels" is not an option here. This column is for people who want to get the most out of their Mac gaming, as meager as it is.

This week's column is a round up of sorts. I'll be talking about what MMOs with Mac clients are out there and links to the developer's site. If I've played them, I'll share any observations. I'm trying for bullet-points this time; some of these may warrant a closer look in a future column. So, most of these are just very brief overviews. For semantic reasons that likely make sense only to me, this time around I'm not mentioning multi-platform browser titles, and am instead focusing on games the developers have created a Macintosh client for.

Returning to an MMO after an eight-month absence, after barely playing for a month, is like waking up in a strange grocery store after a vicious blow to the head left you with amnesia. You've got this shopping list in your hands, but you've got absolutely no idea where any of these items are. It will say things like "Ned wants milk. You can find the milk southeast of me." Who is Ned? Where was he when you met him? Where is "southeast of him," when you've got no friggin' clue where he is?

Such was my return to Lord of the Rings Online. I had a quest log full of tasks that were almost familiar to me, but my memory lacked the proper synapses to form where they began, and more importantly, where I had to journey to complete them. I found out the hard way that "the hills northeast of Bree" are not the hills on the map in North Bree-lands, but rather a small cluster of hills more on the west side. In the process I drove a friend of mine crazy with my mindless ranting about how the quest descriptions couldn't have gotten more vague if they tried.

After a while I got my groove back. I remembered where Brandy Hall was in Buckland. I remembered where the auction house, the trainers, and a few more quest-givers were. Once I had a sense of reference I stopped harassing my friend about "where the frack was this dude" and became familiar with the Google maps portion of the Lorebook on the official site-a nifty feature added after I stopped playing. Instead I started complaining to her about why all these gold resellers are hawking their wares in the middle of Bree? In three years of World of WarCraft I've added none to my ignore list. I fear there's a cap to my ignore list in LoTRO because at the rate I'm adding those bastards I'll hit it by week's end.

Before the flame war starts (I realize it's inevitable on this one), let me clarify what I mean by "true roleplaying": the game engine and "rules" place have as few restrictions as possible;. While most of the MMOs we play are allegedly roleplaying games, most of them define your role. A great roleplaying game lets you create your own role for yourself and act it out, similar to a character at an improv theatre. "Roleplaying" in most RPGs is sorta like being in Hamlet; you can put your own spin on it, but you're forced to working within the director's vision. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern? Great roles stuck in Hamlet.

Games like WoW can be considered "roleplaying," sure. WoW lets you become that burly dwarf that does a mean Gimli impression by gruffly saying, 'Where's the brew, mate?". But you're constrained by game limitations and people's expectations. For instance, if you wanted to role-play a "big bad dwarf that's a coward and wants to hide behind the priest's robes" well, that'd get old after the first instance and most likely ensure you aren't invited again. Yes, I know there's people like Naked Troll guy , but let's be fair, he's an exception in a game that derides people for not having the optimal spec on raids.

This one's in the "resurrect the dead category." If you find World of WarCraft a little on the light side and other fantasy-based MMOs lacking, you can still get a taste of "the good ole days" with EverQuest Macintosh Edition.

EQMac lives literally in the Forgotten Lands at SOE: the SOE staffer I originally contacted to fact-check a few things responded "You can't play EQ on a Mac." It's not her fault, really; the last patch was almost three years ago in January 2005. However, Al'Kabor, the lone Mac -based server, is still limping along. You can get a 15-day trial key here -- after that it's $14.95/month and is part of the Station All Access Pass.

Now, why would I suggest you play on a server that lives in SOE's Land That Time Forgot? A place where Dolly Parton is likely to get better support from a training bra than you are from SOE -- allegedly, there's a server GM and some CSRs, but I've heard response time a little slow, even by SOE standards. I'm throwing it out there for two reasons: it's an alternative to WoW, and there's the makings of one hell of a community there.

Today, three major MMOs are dark: World of WarCraft, EverQuest, and EverQuest 2 for content patches or expansions -- WoW gets patch 2.3; EQ and EQ2 each have shiny new expansions. It's not often the big three are offline at the same time for new content, so this must either be a sign of the apocalypse or product managers imitating carny barkers by jumping up and down yelling, "Play my game, not that other game!" It is our sworn duty here at Massively to remind you there is this thing called the "outdoors" and we hear it's quite lovely this time of year. So, go check it out and get back to us on what it's like, will ya?

Of today's releases, I'm looking forward to the EQ2 expansion, Rise of Kunark the most. While the level 70-80 content is too high for me, I'm a total sucker for new starting areas. I've been wanting to roll a necro, so tomorrow I'll check out Timorus Deep with my still-got-the-new-toon-smell Sarnak. The WoW patch is a complete whiff for me since I failed in both getting my alt to level 20 and my main to level 70 -- the fall game review cycle can make for a hellacious schedule for freelancers. So no improved XP or Zul'Aman for me. It's been years since I've played EQ, and, you guessed it, my main is under the level cap so there's nothing there for me, either -- sense a pattern on non-level-capped chars?

How about you? How are you spending patch day? What's the over/under on the length of the downtime? Which game are you logging into first?

Kendricke over at clockworkgamer.com has a write-up on "Ten reasons you should buy EQ2." Now, admittedly, Kendricke is an SOE fanboy of the highest order, so you need to take his words with a grain of salt. Of the ten reasons he listed, there's two I really agree with: "It's never been easier," and "Eight for the price of one."

I enjoyed EQ2 when it launched, but once I hit the mid-30s I really got bogged down in the grind. I didn't get the impression there were a ton of quests and grinding just got old fast. I wanted to get to my mid-40s to enjoy the content in the Desert of Flame expanson but just couldn't get motivated. In Echoes of Faydwer , though, there are a ton of mid-level quests. In two, short evenings of play I got from level 34 to 35 -- something I had originally thought would take a week. They've also added in a new starting area for evil folk, Neriak, with a boatload of quests.

His second point that every time SOE releases an EQ2 expansion it's also a rollup is valid. When Rise of Kunark ships next week, it will have all previous EQ2 expansions, adventure packs, and the core game. Three of those (the original game, Echoes of Faydwer, and Rise of Kunark) have starting areas for new characters. Granted, a new player can't get to all of the content, but your catch-up costs are low.

As Dan O'Halloran mentions in his write-up of the new EverQuest 2 expansion, Rise of Kunark. epic quests are coming to EQ2. If you played EverQuest, this could cause you to roll your eyes and exclaim, "Oh, no. Not this crap again!"

This is likely to spark some debate, but I think epics rank high on the list of "Worst ideas in EverQuest." People felt a sense of entitlement to the damn things. It wasn't uncommon for people to cause guild strife getting the fool thing, only to quit their "fun" guild and join the uber guild that smartly required people to already have the items so they didn't go through all that malarky. Not that I'm bitter about it. mind you.

It was the Cleric "click stick" epic that broke many guilds and player's spirits. EverQuest had a hefty experience point loss on death. The Cleric epic was a mana-less, instant-cast stick that gave you 100% of the xp back. [Edit: I stand corrected, it is indeed 96%. That's what I get for trusting my memory. What's 4% amongst friends?] If memory serves me right, it was also the only class epic that ended up being a have-to-get.

NCsoft runs a regular feature on the Guild Wars page named "State of the Game." While the name seems to be a tad of a misnomer -- when I think of "State of ..." articles, I expect to hear about the current state and where it's going. The State of the Game articles on the official page are more features about the game. They've got a new one up titled "Remember When?" and is a fun look back at the game's early days.

To be honest, my Guild Wars time really began when Factions came out, but it wasn't until Nightfall's release I really started digging the game. So, my answer to "Remember When?" is, "No, not really." But, it's a fun look at how Guild Wars has evolved. For instance, I didn't know that Balthazar faction was a late add and PvP players had to unlock skills in PvE.

It should be an interesting trip down memory lane for veteran players. What fond memories of Guild Wars do you have that didn't make the list?