Muckbeast

Wolfshead has two blog posts that really delve into this issue in great detail:
The Emasculation of MMOs: Part 1 – How Convenience Replaced Risk
The Emasculation of MMOs: Part 2 – Fun is for Children, Adventure is for Adults
Reading those posts, and the ones he links to from Keen’s blog, really made me miss some of [...]

One of my Bright Hub writers recently wrote a very interesting article: WoW Character History.
What was most interesting was the sheer wealth of information that is available to players about OTHER players. History of guilds joined and left, gear, last time logged on, and more. Upon reading this article, I was actually shocked and would [...]

This is a good issue that was raised on the Keen and Graev blog with their post: Guilds are simply too important.
I can definitely see where he is going with the argument, and I agree to a great extent.
There was a time on MMOs where a guild could be formed for any manner of reasons [...]

I have written about this topic many times before. The two biggest examples are:
Raiding Provides a False, Deceptive Sense of Real Accomplishment
Fed up! Raiding sucks as a sole form of end game content.
This would be a pretty dull post if all I was doing was encouraging you to go back and read those [...]

There are probably many other examples where the internet (or more specifically, the extreme easy access to virtually any information) has been detrimental to games and game design. I invite anyone to share their own examples. For purposes of this post, I am focusing on one.
In the 80s and early to mid 90s, there were [...]

Players often wonder how devs break things. They rant and rave and say things like “this worked yesterday, why can’t they just leave the things that work alone and work on new things instead.” What they don’t understand is that is a contradictory statement. I will give you a very simple example.
In Primordiax, I decided [...]

This happens more often than I’d like, and it happened today. A player was doing a repeatable crafting task on Primordiax. He had to make 5 copper plates and then turn them into to Garen – an armorcrafter in Chemer. He has done the task before and it worked fine. But today after taking 3 [...]

Readers are always asking me to share some actual insight into the game development process. I always worry that it might be boring for people. I’ll give it a shot though:
Integers are great. For those of you not familiar with integers, they are basically positive or negative whole numbers: 1, 2, 3, -1, -2, -3, [...]

Permadeath was never a tremendously popular feature in MUDs, but it was common enough that it did have a certain following. Some players consider permadeath a vital component of roleplaying, and they feel it adds a significant amount of excitement and tension to a game.
I certainly understand why no commercial MMORPGs have experimented with the [...]

If you aren’t reading The Psychology of Video Games blog yet you are missing out. Between that site and a few other blog posts I’ve read recently (like Wolfshead’s lament about WoW’s Growing Immersion Deficit) I was motivated to write an article about designing group contest events in MMOs. This is just a small part [...]

I’ve been meaning to blog about this for a while. This article at MMORPG is the final push over the edge.
Most MMOs have gone with the shard/server approach. Each copy of the game has a distinct community. You make characters on a specific server, and the character can only be played on that server. Each [...]

Intereting article on Gamasutra today: Opinion: If You’re Not Having Fun, Play Something Else
The part that really resonated with me:
Instead of thinking “core versus casual,” we’d be served to look at things like complexity, challenge, difficulty and tedium as components of specific genres, rather than universal concepts that must be reduced across the board for [...]

Wolfshead has started a really great discussion on his blog: Waiting for the Next MMO Revolution
The reason why I’m in a perpetual state of angst is that I feel that the MMO industry has squandered all of the great potential that was evident a scant 10 years ago during the first MMO revolution heralded by [...]

I want to revisit a favorite issue of mine. New Grind, Just like the Old Grind: Quest Heavy Advancement.
When people read that article, they often get the wrong idea. I don’t hate quests (or missions). I don’t think a 100% mob grinding game is the way to go. What I hate is when a game [...]

One thing about Threshold I have always taken a lot of pride in is the fact that our population is almost an exact 50/50 split of men and women. I think this one fact has been vitally important to the strength of our community. This is incredibly common in the MMO industry, however:
“Currently, 64% of [...]

I always loved the idea of Guild Wars. I love their business model. I love so many of their game design concepts (full respec in town at will, great end game, many features designed to enhance community and social aspects, etc.). Unfortunately, when I played the game I just couldn’t get into it. The inability [...]

My wife and I played a lot of this back on the Gamecube, and years later we picked it up for the DS as well. We loved it in both incarnations. We keep meaning to pick it up for the Wii. Should we?
Benjamin Sell has been working on a ton of great guides for the [...]

CO might be a good game. You can read my Champions Online Preview here. But there is a serious problem, and it points to an even MORE serious problem.
Hyper customization is the primary USP (Unique Selling Point) of CO. There are no classes. There are just tons of powers to choose from. This is wonderful [...]

While often fodder for amusing videos and funny jokes, the way “noobs“ are derided in MMO culture is a very disturbing thing. While it is nothing new for insular hobbies or communities to be hesitant to embrace newcomers, MMO Elitism seems to take this to new levels. “Leet“ (or 3l33t, or elite) players take newbie [...]

MMOs are obviously multiplayer games. It even says so in the acronym! Despite this, good MMOs generally support solo play or small team play. Occasionally something comes along that forces large team grouping on people (like raiding), and people who prefer solo/small team play bristle against this. Invariably, pro-forced team fanboys (like the hard core [...]