Salute to Moorgard

Well, I hate to follow up an angry rant with a praise filled salute but, unfortunately, the situation calls for it. Moorgard has announced that he is moving from his Community Manager position to that of full-time game designer.

When I think about praising Moorgard, I have to chuckle. You see, one of my earliest rants occurred when Moorgard innocently cracked a joke on the official forums about blogs and blogging. Of course, I decided to launch into a temper-fuelled screed which you can read here.

Still, even in that post, I said I was a fan. And my esteem for Moorgard's work has grown since then. If you don't appreciate Moorgard, perhaps you haven't read some of the posts of people in similar positions who work for other games. I'm not alone in this - I bet even the more cynical MMO commentators would agree that Moorgard is an asset to EQII.

But let me give you some proof. First, he has a sense of humor. In this post, I pointed out his hilarious rendition of a forums poster: "I begged Higby and Rizzo to do it so I didn't have to see 50 threads popping up tomorrow saying "I want to play all evil characters EXCEPT the one slot I saved for a froglok. But because the quest is only in Qeynos, I can't do that. WHY DO YOU HATE ME SOE?!?!?!?!"

Second, he is intelligent and well-rounded. In this post he utilizes the literary device of the unreliable narrator (he explains it better than I can, but a good example from literature would be Ford Madox Ford's The Good Soldier). This strikes a particular chord with me. In many a college English seminar or a book club meeting I would lean forward and say sagely, "Perhaps we are dealing with an unreliable narrator here." Then people would usually ooh and ahh as I would sit back and think, "Pwned."

Third, he knows online gaming. Just check out this thread. It is an eloquent and brilliant explanation that makes you angry after you read it because you should have thought of it yourself.

Finally, he is a good and readable writer and you can find that proof in any of his posts. I haven't always agreed with all that he has said, but I like the way he has said it.

I certainly wish him the best in his new position. I also am happy that we have Blackguard to step in as Community Manager, a position I think he can fill ably.

Let's hope Moorgard's work behind the scenes is as good as his work in front of them.

I still think Moorhunter is a blog though.